


A Thousand Purple Stars

by AirDoodles



Category: BLACKPINK (Band), GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Childhood Friends, Comedy, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Love/Hate, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-03 10:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 113,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11530491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirDoodles/pseuds/AirDoodles
Summary: Jisoo has hated Jinyoung since middle school—and the feeling's mutual—but when her dreams of becoming a serious writer are threatened by her lack of romantic experience, she has no choice but to recruit him as a fake boyfriend to fool her boss. Turns out, the line between love and hate is finer than either of them think.





	1. Kim Jisoo

He’s definitely had a haircut.

 

Jisoo leaned against her arm languidly and sighed. Her eyes narrowed at the young man at the front of the room, scrutinizing his forehead. Jaebum looked slightly different today. She had noticed it the minute she walked into the classroom because she was a self-proclaimed expert on all matters pertaining to Jaebum’s appearance. If anyone asked her how she could so accurately pinpoint the reason why her Business and New Media TA looked different, she’d probably just scoff and say that any of the other students who saw Jaebum in the classroom twice a week would have noticed, too. And she’d deny that her scrutiny had anything to do with the fact that Jaebum was drop dead gorgeous. Especially now that you could see his forehead.

 

“So, in this chapter we learned about social media as promotional tools for businesses,” Jaebum said, reading off a paper with the professor’s notes on it. “And we looked at Instagram and Snapchat ‘story’ features as case studies. Someone wanna give us the gist of the author’s argument? What about you, Jisoo?”

 

The whole class looked over its shoulder at Jisoo, who was still leaning against her arm with a dreamy, far-off look in her face. She didn’t seem to notice when Jaebum’s face gave her an expectant look, even though she’d been staring at him. When he talked, she just kept staring at his luscious mouth.

 

“Jisoo?” Jaebum said again. “The author’s central argument?”

 

“Pay attention!” shouted a boy, and Jisoo’s focus was finally shook. She blinked and cleared her throat as she stepped out of her daydream and back into the dreary real world of Business and New Media.

 

“Huh?” Jisoo said. She hated the way her voice dipped even deeper when she was confused. She sounded like Scooby Doo. All her classmates were staring at her, and when she looked back at Jaebum, his gorgeous face was still waiting for an answer.

 

“Oh, sorry!” She looked down at her desk and found the magazine she’d been reading still open to her page. She snatched it away and replaced it with her eReader, hoping that no one had noticed her slacking off. Jisoo bent over and feverishly began flipping through the pages of the textbook on her eReader.

 

What was he saying before? What did he ask? Her skin started to feel hot and damp beneath the collar of her pressed white button-up. She could feel her classmates rolling their eyes at her.

 

Crap. She hadn’t been paying attention at all to what Jaebum was talking about. Her forehead creased with anxiety, and she looked up slowly.

 

“Umm,” she said, laughing sheepishly. “Can you repeat the question?”

 

The whole room groaned with irritation. Even Jaebum clicked his tongue with disappointment as he had to look back down at the lesson outline. Jisoo flushed with embarrassment. In the end, another student raised her hand and shouted out the answer before Jaebum had a chance to repeat his question or Jisoo had a chance to redeem herself. Their TA cleared his throat and just continued with the discussion.

 

Jisoo slumped back in her chair and let out a slow breath. Then she leaned forward and massaged her temples, staring up at the clock every so often. For the next half hour, she tried her best to follow along with her classmates’ discussion on her eReader, but her brain started throb, sore from the effort of trying to feign interest in anything related to business at all. Giving up, she moved her eReader aside and looked back down at the magazine she’d been reading.

 

Jisoo had been subscribed to Embrace Magazine since she was thirteen, and she read the literary publication’s romance-focused short stories and serialized novels religiously. Almost each and every one brought tears or at least a slight stinging sensation to her eyes and a heavy feeling to her heart. Stories about proud, plucky heroines falling for dark, mysterious men after going on grand adventures. Sometimes, the stories were about shy ingenues who find themselves falling for equally misunderstood outcasts. Sometimes they were about steamy romances developing between two people whose love was forbidden. No matter what the story was about, each one was always told with rich, beautiful, elevated prose that reminded Jisoo why she _had_ to be a part of the work this magazine was doing.

 

Gently, she ran her finger over the top edge of the magazine until her skin touched a piece of parchment. She opened the magazine at that spot. Lying in the middle of the publication was a slim, folded piece of transparent parchment. Squashed in between was a small pressed and dried wildflower with thin, gossamer purple petals and a center that used to be yellow. It was very delicate, so Jisoo was careful as she opened up the parchment a bit to check on her flower. It had been her lucky charm all these years, and god knows that she would need all her luck later today.

 

Moving her attention away from the flower and back to the page, she ran her index finger over the glossy finish until it came to rest on a spot on the masthead.

 

Julie Kiyoko, Managing Editor.

 

Jisoo felt her heart swell at the same time that her stomach lurched. She looked up to check the clock once more. In just a little over an hour and a half, she would be meeting Julie Kiyoko, Embrace Magazine Managing Editor. This job interview would be her first step toward her dream.

 

 

 

 

Jisoo had given herself away to daydreaming once again and almost didn’t even notice when her classmates started to stand up and pack their bags. She folded her flower back up into the parchment, gently so as not to damage it, and then she slipped it between the pages of a novel she was reading. Then, she threw everything else into her bag and stood up.

 

“Jisoo, wait,” said Jaebum before she reached the door. Taking a minute to fix her shirt and steady her beating heart (why did his voice have this effect on her?) Jisoo turned and walked toward her TA.

 

_Relax_ , she tried to tell herself, but she couldn’t help it. The closer she got to Jaebum, the more nervous she felt. He was wearing a navy blue suit today, which _had_ to be the sexiest of all the suit colors. Paired with his new haircut and the slightly scary aura of authority that wafted around him (which was admittedly also kind of hot), Jisoo didn’t know what to do with herself.

 

He was half sitting, half leaning against the desk, and when Jisoo slowed to a stop in front of him, he held out a stapled pack of papers toward her.

 

“I read your draft,” he said. Jisoo gave him a nervous look.

 

“You did?” she said. “I mean… thanks. Uh, so what did you think?”

 

“You have a gift, you know?” he said, and Jisoo immediately blushed.

 

“Really?” she said, hating how pathetically hopeful her voice sounded just then. Jaebum nodded.

 

“You really have a way with words and expression, your writing is strong,” he said, not breaking eye contact with her. Jisoo’s heart raced, doubling in speed with each compliment.

 

“Thank y—,”

 

“But,” he continued, crossing his arms and his expression turning solemn. “I think your research lacks substance. I can tell you’ve done the reading, but there’s nothing in your paper that tells me that you’ve actually done any hands on digging in the information. Everything just feels too surface, you’re going to have to go back and dig deeper to come up with anything of substance. You understand?”

 

Jisoo blinked at him. Yes, she understood, and he was right, of course. Even before she turned the draft into him, she knew he was going to say that her writing was half-assed and the research felt rushed and surface. But still. She never did take criticism very well. Especially when it came to her writing.

 

Her ego was hurt. But she couldn’t lash out now. If not because this was Jaebum she was speaking to, then because doing so would lengthen this meeting, and she wanted to be at the Embrace Magazine headquarters early for her interview. So she just swallowed her wounded pride and nodded.

 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. Jaebum didn’t let go of her gaze for a long time, but the look in his eyes was stern.

 

“Has everything been alright, Jisoo?” he asked. Jisoo blinked at him again.

 

“Of course?” she said. It was meant to be a declarative statement, but it sounded like a question.

 

“You’ve been zoning out a lot in class,” he said. “I know it’s your senior year and this is probably the last thing you want to be doing with your final days in college, but you should try to finish off strong.”

 

“Right,” Jisoo said. Yes, she liked Jaebum’s forehead and the way he looked in a navy suit, but that didn’t mean she liked being lectured to like a child about college by someone who was just barely out of college himself. But again, Jisoo stopped herself from lashing out. She cleared her throat, and without anything else to say, Jaebum bid her a good weekend and let her go.

 

When she stepped out of the double doors of the building in a hurry, Jisoo saw Jennie sitting down on the top step of the stairs, shuffling through a deck of flash cards. When she saw Jisoo approaching, Jennie tucked the cards into her purse and stood to greet her friend.

 

“Good morning,” Jennie chimed. Jisoo was speed-walking and slightly out of breath as she replied.

 

“Hey. Come on, walk with me, I don’t wanna be late.”

 

Jennie fell into step beside Jisoo as they both headed for the campus bus station. Unlike Jisoo, who was wearing a business major’s requisite suit outfit, Jennie looked very fashionable in an off-shoulder top and matching pencil skirt.

 

“How was Business and New Media?” Jennie asked cheerfully. Jisoo’s face twisted in disgust.

 

“Ugh, Business and New Media,” Jisoo said, saying the class’ name as if it were the name of a dreaded ex-boyfriend.

 

“Boring, as usual,” Jisoo said. “I hate Business and New Media. But I think Jaebum got a haircut, it looks so flattering with his bone structure, you know? He was so cute. He really should push his hair back more often, a little bit of forehead goes a long way.”

 

Jennie’s laugh came out as a snort. “I’m glad your TA viewing session went so well.”

 

Jisoo, ignoring her comment, checked her watch. “What time is it?”

 

“You’ve got a little over half an hour,” Jennie said, taking a sip from a cold Starbucks drink she had in her hand.”

 

Jisoo stopped and gave Jennie a frazzled look. “Half?” she said. “God, how’s my hair? Flat again, probably. I wish it had more volume. Damn it.”

 

“It looks fine,” Jennie said, tucking a stray hair behind Jisoo’s ear for good measure, although this hard to do while walking at the same time, and she ended up just poking Jisoo in the earlobe. Jisoo groaned.

 

“I hate this stupid class,” Jisoo said, looking up and speaking her hate to the heavens. “I hate my major. Why’d I do this again?”

 

She turned to Jennie for an answer, and her best friend replied breezily: “Because you love your dad and didn’t wanna disappoint him with your romantic dreams of becoming a deadbeat author.”

 

Spot on. Jennie took another sip from her drink and watched with amusement as Jisoo tried to avoid another breakdown.

 

“I have to say,” Jennie said. “When I first met you and you told me that was your dream, I did think it was a little uncharacteristically Bohemian of you.”

 

Jisoo laughed, and Jennie smiled at her victory. “I’m full of surprises,” Jisoo said.

 

“You got your portfolio with you?” Jennie asked. Jisoo tapped her bag.

 

“Yup. It’s all here. You know, the one good thing that came out of actually going to this class this morning is that I’m at least already dressed for my interview. One thing I don’t have to stress over. Is this okay? I picked this outfit out yesterday.”

 

Jisoo stopped walking for a minute to do a small twirl and Jennie scanned her outfit. It was a normal two piece suit made up of a gray blazer, a gray pencil skirt, and a white shirt. Not exactly eye-catching, but then again, no one had ever been denied a job for showing up to the interview in a suit.

 

“Yeah, it’s cute,” Jennie said. “You look capable, like you’re able to carry a tray of coffee in a conference _and_ input numbers into a spreadsheet at the same time.”

 

“Great!” Jisoo said, throwing two enthusiastic thumbs up. “And the blazer is okay? Not too mature. I’m trying to look grown up, but not too _madame_.”

 

“Maybe undo the top button, it’ll make the look younger.”

 

Jisoo did as Jennie said and undid the top button but then fixed her shirt so that she wasn’t showing too much cleavage.

 

“I know I was freaking out to yesterday about this,” Jisoo said, resuming their walk. “But I just want you to know that since last night’s meltdown, I’ve thought a lot about this. I am cool and confident and completely not nervous at all.”

 

“I think if you say it a couple more times, you’ll start believing it.”

 

“I really need this job,” Jisoo said, stopping and turning to face Jennie head-on. Her eyes sparkled with desperation. “I can’t stand working another day at that tired, awful marketing firm anymore. You seriously need to pray for me, Jennie.”

 

“I’ll light a candle for you at church if I pass one,” Jennie said. “But don’t stress out too much. You’ve still got plenty of time, graduation is four months out, and we still haven’t even planned our post-grad girls’ trip, so there’s that to look forward to.” She gave Jisoo’s arm a reassuring squeeze, but Jisoo still looked slightly down.

 

“Yeah, but all I’ll be able to think about if I don’t get this job at Embrace is how I’ll have to go back home and my dad will make me take over the grove and… I’ll be Kim Peachu for the rest of my life. Oh _god_. I _can’t_ have that, Jennie. Oh god, I’ve just made myself even more nervous now!”

 

Jisoo started walking again and Jennie jogged to catch up with her. Jisoo was pressing her fingers into her temples and massaging small circles into her skin as they approached the buses.

 

“Calm down. Take a deep breath,” Jennie said, making Jisoo turn and look at her. “You’re a damn good writer, Kim Jisoo, and all you have to do is be yourself. They’ll see how talented you are and they’d be idiots not to hire you!”

 

Jisoo slowed again to look at Jennie, hope replacing the desperation for a minute. “You think so?”

 

Jennie held Jisoo’s gaze, as if to say _I dare you to tell me I’m lying._

 

“Yes, I do,” Jennie said in a tone so determined that it discouraged Jisoo from questioning her. And that was the last word about it. Jisoo gave her an assured nod and then took a deep breath. Seeing Jisoo getting more comfortable, Jennie switched back to a more joking tone.

 

“Who came up with Kim Peachu?” she said, smirking. “God, that’s clever. I might use it.”

 

“Peaches, I grew up on a peach grove,” Jisoo said, arriving at the bus station. “But it doesn’t matter, ‘cause I won’t be Kim Peachu for much longer. I want to be…”

 

Jisoo puffed her chest out for a minute and smiled into the sun. “I want to be… Kim Jisoo… novelist.”

 

Her words wafted in the air and the wind carried it out into the world, and with that declaration, her dream felt even just a little bit closer. She felt it might actually happen today. When she looked back at Jennie, the girl was holding her Starbucks drink with both hands and tilting her head at her.

 

“Reach for the stars, Jisoo,” Jennie said. Then she leaned forward and gave Jisoo a one-armed hug. “And remember me when you’re famous, okay?”

 

“Who are you again?” Jisoo said, pulling away from the hug. Then, she turned and rushed toward her bus. “Wish me luck! I’ll text you how it goes!”

 

“You better!”


	2. Park Jinyoung

Jinyoung’s new apartment wasn’t really even an apartment at all.

 

It was actually just a room on the third floor of Hillside Residences, a convalescent home for the elderly. Being just twenty-two, most people would find it weird for him to live in a home for the elderly, but it was private and affordable and the best Jinyoung could do on short notice and for such a short-term arrangement. It was already furnished, too, and he got it cheap because the owner of the convalescent home was Jackson’s mother who, being a hopeless romantic, was sympathetic to his situation.

 

That, and he also agreed to take on three shifts a week on a volunteer basis. Two weekend morning shifts and one evening shift on Tuesdays.

 

It was easy work; Jackson’s mother didn’t even seem all that bothered by his lack of professional medical experience. She was walking through the room, pointing things out. Despite her age, she looked young and curvaceous and her hair was full and dark.

 

She told Jinyoung that most of his duties would include things like helping the kitchen staff prepare breakfast or helping some of the residents out of their beds and into their chairs or changing bedpans. Mostly, she just needed another strong pair of young arms, and in exchange for discounted rent, Jinyoung was happy to do the job.

 

“We have a company that comes by and does the linens on Thursdays,” Mrs. Wang said, snatching the dusty linen sheet off the twin bed and rolling it up in her arms. Jinyoung stood in the doorway with a box of his things in his arms. Beside him, Jackson was carrying a second box of his belongings.

 

Jinyoung stepped inside and looked around the room. It was small, much smaller than the bedroom he shared with Mark back on Campus Drive. A twin-sized bed in the corner of the room. A square window in the center of the wall. There was also a bedside table with a vase full of daffodils and a lamp. On the opposite wall, there was a good-sized wardrobe and a desk. Meager, but it would do.

 

“Just roll up the soiled sheets and leave them outside your door,” Mrs. Wang continued. “You got your bed, your desk, a wardrobe here. There’s a bathroom down the hall. Breakfast is from 7 to 10, dinner is at 6, lunch for the residents is at 12:30 but you’ve gotta cover that one on your own. Following?”

 

“God, life here is like life in a religious order,” Jackson said. “Never knew you ran such a tight ship, Ma.”

 

“How do you think I’m putting you through college?” Mrs. Wang said. “Rent is due on the first of the month. If you won’t be around, just stick it under the ‘welcome’ mat in front of the office. And don’t forget, you’ve got two morning shifts and the graveyard shift on Wednesday.”

 

After explaining his living situation further and giving her son a quick scolding about not coming home often enough, Mrs. Wang left the boys to unpack. Jackson made a show of dumping the box onto the desk and then straightening out and rubbing his back. Jinyoung squatted down and put his box down on the floor. Jackson looked around the room and whistled, commenting that Jinyoung had seriously downgraded from the three-bedroom apartment on Campus Drive. Jinyoung didn’t answer him.

 

“Isn’t it kind of morbid to call it the ‘graveyard’ shift?” Jackson asked after another beat of silence.

 

“What do you mean?” Jinyoung asked, starting to take items out of the box and lay them on the bed. Textbooks and cable wires. A watch and a pair of black leather Oxfords. A box of brand new pens and an amigurumi octopus. Jackson watched the sad way that his friend handled his own belongings.

 

“I mean… the graveyard is where most of these people are going really soon,” Jackson said, trying to sound cheerful. “Seems kind of insensitive to rub it in their faces.”

 

Jinyoung lifted a picture frame with a photo of his family in it and placed it on the bedside table. “Guess so,” he said flatly. Jackson pursed his lips.

 

“Anyway, home sweet home, huh?” Jackson said, swinging his arms awkwardly. “We always did joke that you were a grandpa in a college guy’s body.” He laughed and waited for Jinyoung to make some snarky reply, but none came. He just continued unloading the box and laying items down on the bed, holding each one a little longer than normal, as if to caress it.

 

“You’re sure your mom is okay with this?” Jinyoung asked after a while. “I really don’t want to disrupt her—”

 

“It’s fine, she totally doesn’t mind,” Jackson said. Jinyoung finally looked back at him, checking that Jackson was serious. His friend was opening up the wardrobe and hanging a garment bag inside. It contained the tuxedo Jinyoung had bought about a month ago along with some coats and shirts. The rest of his clothing had been stuffed into a luggage bag that now stood in the doorway.

 

He appreciated Jackson’s help with getting his things settled into his new room, but the careful way that he was moving around the room and watching his words was making Jinyoung uncomfortable.

 

“Tell her thanks, again, if you see her on the way out,” Jinyoung said. Jackson turned and stared at Jinyoung, blinking. Jinyoung met his gaze for just a second before turning back to unloading. Jinyoung had run out of things to take out of the box, but Jackson watched as he kept picking up and then tossing down each item, the amigurumi octopus, the Oxford shoes, the watch.

 

“Yeah, sure,” Jackson said. Another beat of silence. “Are—are you okay?” Jackson asked. Jinyoung stopped for a minute and turned.

 

“Yes,” Jinyoung said.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“I’m fine, Jackson,” Jinyoung replied, too fast. Jackson looked over the collection of items on the bed and felt sorry for Jinyoung. He really ought to get rid of some of these things, Jackson thought. There were too many things that reminded him of her.

 

“Do you need anything?” Jackson asked again.

 

“No,” Jinyoung said.

 

“My shift at the bar is gonna start soon. You sure you don’t wanna just hang out with a pint?” Jackson said as a last attempt, but Jinyoung held his gaze longer to make him see that he meant what he said.

 

“I should unpack,” Jinyoung said, his voice flat again. “And I think your mom wants to give me an orientation later. Thanks, though.”

 

With that, Jackson nodded and walked toward the door. When he was nearly out of the room, though, he shook his head and then turned back to Jinyoung one last time.

 

“Just give it some time,” Jackson said sadly, and his words made Jinyoung tense up. “You’ll forget her soon enough. Him, too.”

 

He was out of the room and down the stairs by the time Jinyoung had recovered enough to return to the task of unpacking. But by then, he was no longer in the mood. Jinyoung walked to the door to close it, and then he looked around the room. The juxtaposition of the strange environment and the homely familiarity of his belongings gave him an odd feeling. He walked back to the bed, put his hands on his hips, and examined the array of items that lay there.

 

Almost exactly a month ago, Jinyoung had come back to the Campus Drive apartment unexpectedly early from a trip back to his hometown and found his girlfriend sitting on the couch making out with his roommate.

 

Jinyoung looks his hands from his hips and rubbed his face, as if trying to rub the memory from his mind. It was an image that would haunt him forever: his girlfriend, Nawon, with her arms wrapped around the back of Mark’s neck, his roommate suck on her face, both of their breaths mingling.

 

“What the _fuck?_ ” he had shouted as soon as the shock had passed and realization rammed into him like a speeding bus. The two untangled from each other’s arms. Nawon’s lips had been swollen, and Mark looked paler than usual. Jinyoung stopped there, not wanting to remember anymore of that moment. There was screaming and crying and a lot of confusion. In the end, Jinyoung had just stormed straight out of the apartment and headed straight for the bar where Jackson worked.

 

On Campus Drive, Jinyoung had lived with three other boys: Mark, his roommate, a sophomore, Yugyeom and a Thai exchange student that they called Bambam. Jackson lived with his relatives in an apartment downtown, and he turned out to be the only one in their group of friends who didn’t know that Mark and Nawon were going behind Jinyoung’s back.

 

When Jinyoung found out that they all knew, he dropped his friends except Jackson. He ended his relationship with Nawon, and moved out of that Campus Drive apartment. For a few weeks, he stayed with Jackson while he looked for another place to stay. Hillside Residences popped up a few weeks later.

 

Jinyoung looked down at the items again.

 

He would have liked to get rid of everything he owned that reminded him of Nawon, but that simply wasn’t sensible. He could easily throw out amigurumi figures she crocheted for him on his birthday, but it was harder to throw out a pair of black Oxfords she bought for him since they were the only pair of formal shoes he owned, and he’d need them for graduation. They dated for just seven and a half months, but she had carved out such a large space for herself in his life. Now that she was gone, he felt light, like he could disappear with the next gust of wind.

 

Like Jackson, everyone else who knew about his and Nawon’s breakup treated him like a broken figure or a lost child, trying to console him with small talk and pints of beer. But Jinyoung was long over mourning the lost relationship, he thought. He was no longer depressed; he was annoyed.

 

He moved the items aside and sat down on the bed. No more girlfriend. New apartment. Graduation in four months. Still no word from med schools. What now?

 

As he was sitting and contemplating his next move and what an irritating clusterfuck his life had become, he looked down into the box and found a brown manila envelope at the bottom of it. Jinyoung sighed as he reached for it. He knew what was inside, he’d already opened it. On the train on the way back from his hometown. He opened it up again and two smaller envelope fell into his lap. One had his name on it. He slid his thumb under the flap and took out the letter.

 

“Dear Jinyoung,” the letter began.

 

“By the time you read this, I will most likely have passed on already. I hope you won’t be too upset. The thought of upsetting so many people is really the only thing that’s making this so hard. I’ve had a good run these 60 plus years, and I’ve met so many people that have made my life vibrant and worthwhile. You are one of them.

 

“I have been teaching 13 year olds for thirty years, longer than I haven’t been teaching. But in all those yearsof teaching, I still believe you were one of the most exceptional. You were always hard working and responsible and honest. Before I got sick, I had always wanted to reach out to you and suggest catching up over lunch or something. But I see now that that won’t be possible. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to see the kind of man you’ve become, though I have faith that you’ve grown up to meet and exceed all my expectations.

 

“In these darks days, it gives me comfort knowing that young men like you are still in this world and that I played a part in your growing up. I remember an essay you wrote once, in my class. You said that when you grow up, you wanted to be a superhero. I laughed reading that bit, but you went on to explain that you meant a superhero like your father, the town’s fire chief who had just saved a young girl in a burning department store.

 

“I hope you haven’t given up on this dream. Too many of the “superheroes” in our society are vain, arrogant men who are looking more for an ego boost than a real chance to help people. The world needs more heroes like you.

 

“Anyway, I ought to say goodbye. I’m sorry I was never able to arrange that lunch meeting with you. I wanted to arrange a meeting with Kim Jisoo, as well. As you know, she was also a brilliant student, one of the brightest. Please do me, your beloved ailing teacher, a favor: when you get this letter, call Kim Jisoo and arrange a lunch meeting with her. The two of you can reunite and reminisce about the good days of middle school together, and I will be there with you in spirit.

 

“All the best,

 

“Mr. Hong”

 

Jinyoung sighed as he put the letter down and rubbed his temples. A superhero. Yes, that was what he said he wanted to be when he grew up. That was ten years ago, he was twelve. He no longer wanted to be a superhero. Right now, he didn’t feel very heroic at all.

 

Jinyoung looked back at the letter. Specifically at the last part of it. He had gone back to his hometown a month ago to attend Mr. Hong’s funeral, but the trip back had also forced him on a stroll down memory lane. And most of the memories on that lane that involved Kim Jisoo weren’t exactly the most pleasant. Yes, she was a brilliant student, but she was also petty and rude and arrogant and self-important and she hated his guts as much as he hated hers. Under no other circumstances would he even _think_ about reaching out to her again. Get lunch with her? He would sooner stick needles into his eyeballs.

 

But this was Mr. Hong. The teacher that inspired him most as a kid. And this was Mr. Hong’s last request, his dying wish.

 

Jinyoung sighed again. He’d been sighing a lot lately. He dug his phone out of his pocket and then opened up his contacts list. Her number was there in his phone. All it would take was one call.

 

He hesitated.


	3. Never Been in Love

Jisoo arrived at the Jeon & Sky Publishing offices at exactly 10:30 in the morning, meaning that if she didn’t get to the third floor in exactly one minute, she would be officially late. Served her right, trusting the buses to be on time instead of calling a car. The Embrace offices were on the third floor. She ran over to the elevator after obtaining a guest pass from reception. Once inside, she smoothed down her hair and fanned herself, trying not to look as winded and sweaty as she was.

 

_Great_ , she thought. The most important interview of her life and here she was, walking in late and looking like she’d come back from a marathon. Evidently, her lucky flower wasn’t in its element today.

 

She straightened out her blouse and her blazer, and when the elevator bell signaled her arrival, she walked onto the third floor with as much dignity as she could muster. Jisoo walked into a hallway and was first greeted by a girl sitting at a reception table. The words “EMBRACE” was written out on the wall above her head in the slick font she had come to love and recognize over many years as a loyal subscriber.

 

“You need some help?” the girl at the counter asked. Jisoo jogged over and told the girl that she was supposed to be seeing Julie Kiyoko, who was interviewing her for a position as an editorial assistant.

 

“Oh, another one,” the girl offhandedly said as she gestured toward an iPad that Jisoo was supposed to sign in on. “Ms. Kiyoko is taking interviewees in that conference room down the corridor. It’s a group interview. You’re just a little bit late, but they’ll have just started, so you can go right in.”

 

“Thanks!” Jisoo said after tapping her name into the sign-in sheet. Then she grabbed her briefcase and tried her hardest not to sprint to the conference room. Once there, she pushed the door open slowly.

 

At the head of the table stood a short Japanese woman in a crisp white pantsuit. Her hair was cropped sharply to the same sloping angle as her jawline, and a pair of vintage blue glasses rested on her nose bridge. This intimidating woman could only be Ms. Kiyoko herself, Managing Editor of Embrace. Jisoo felt the saliva in her mouth go dry.

 

The other two girl who were sitting to Ms. Kiyoko’s left looked up at the tardy third interviewee. They were both tall, even when sitting, and slender. One wore a sweet pink office dress and had her hair in a bun atop her head. The other had slick brown hair and a floral, textured blazer.

 

Shit, Jioo hadn’t gotten the colorful outfits memo. She looked like she’d been to a funeral.

 

“You must Kim Jisoo,” said Julie Kiyoko cheerfully. Jisoo apologized for her tardiness, shook her hand, and laughed nervously as she took the last empty seat to her left.

 

“Sorry I’m late,” Jisoo said, still laughing nervously. “I took the bus, and there were too many delays, all these tourists and… anyway, it doesn’t matter, I’m sorry I interrupted!”

 

“Oh, it’s not problem,” Ms. Kiyoko said. “Meet Krystal Jung and Suzy Bae. I hope you don’t mind that I changed this to a group interview, I have to meet with our sponsors over lunch so this time worked best.”

 

“Oh, it’s no problem!”

 

Jisoo turned to the other girls and greeted them. They smiled and gave her a cold greeting in turn. The interview continued normally afterward, and Jisoo was glad her late entrance didn’t put her too far behind the other girls. Through Ms. Kiyoko’s questioning, Jisoo learned that both Krystal and Suzy were recent grads with degrees in Literature, and Suzy in particular had a concentration in writing. Krystal was the editor-in-chief of a student-run publication of creative writing at her college, and Suzy had four short stories published in Thread, another literary journal that specialized in publishing original works of fiction and poetry.

 

“And you, Jisoo?” Ms. Kiyoko said, turning her bespectacled smile to Jisoo. “I see on your resume that you’re on the staff of your college newspaper. Can you tell me a bit more about that experience?”

 

Krystal and Suzy turned to her with expectant looks on their faces. Jisoo cleared her throat, hearing Jennie saying _be yourself_ in her head.

 

“Of course!” Jisoo said. “I’m a writer for the Opinion section, and I specialize in writing editorials about pop cultural moments. I submitted two pieces a week, my latest one was about the sudden popularity of zombie films.”

 

“Zombie films?” asked Krystal, tilting her head a bit.

 

“Yeah, like _The Walking Dead_ and stuff,” Jisoo said. “The piece was about how society’s new fascination with the undead mirrors weakening social ties brought on by over-dependence on technology.”

 

“Fascinating,” Ms. Kiyoko said. “I think I saw that piece in the online portfolio you sent. I saw you also had a few pieces about…” she dug into the folder in front of her and read the title from the printed page: “Why Shin Ramen is a Branding Specialist’s Wet Dream… and you also sent in a short blog post you wrote about your dog… Dalgom?”

 

“It was for an assignment,” Jisoo explained, growing nervous under Julie Kiyoko, Suzy, and Ksytral’s gazes. “In my Marketing course, we did a lesson on branding, and my group decided we wanted to try branding a pet owner’s blog. They needed some copy, so I wrote that.”

 

“I see,” Ms. Kiyoko said, putting the papers down. “Your other samples were also very strong. I actually really enjoyed reading all of them, you’ve a real way with words. And what did you say your major was, again? Literature, correct?”

 

Jisoo’s heart sank. “Business, actually.”

 

She didn’t need to read minds to know that Suzy and Krystal were secretly feeling smug. One lesson competitor, they were probably thinking. Jisoo saw Julie Kiyoko scribble something on her resume, but the woman just looked up, smiled pleasantly and said: “Let’s move on, shall we?”

 

And move on, they did. Ms. Kiyoko asked them all typical interview questions such as some more information about their backgrounds, how they handled difficult situations, their ideal work environment. The work they spoke, the more discouraged Jisoo felt.

 

“Now, are you all familiar with the work we do at Embrace?” Ms. Kiyoko said, folding her hand neatly in her lap. Jisoo smiled. Finally, something she could answer.

 

“Hell yeah,” she said too enthusiastically. “I mean, yes, ma’am.”

 

The editor smiled. Krystal and Suzy nodded dutifully.

 

“Perfect,” Ms. Kiyoko said. “So, then, you all know that we are a literary magazine with a focus on love and romance. Love, of course, being the… well, the most important thing on this earth. You might find this next question a little unorthodox, but it’s an Embrace tradition, so please just indulge me.”

 

Jisoo and the other two girls leaned forward, anticipating this unorthodox question. Ms. Kiyoko continued:

 

“We are all storytellers here at Embrace,” she said. “Telling stories about the force that drives life. So, I want you to tell me your personal love story.”

 

Jisoo’s mind drew an instant blank.

 

“Huh?” she said in her Scooby Doo voice again. Krsytal and Suzy looked at her in surprised and Ms. Kiyoko tiled her head.

 

“Are you confused, Jisoo?” asked Julie Kiyoko.

 

Jisoo, still frozen, stammered: “Oh. No, uh. Sorry, can you just repeat that last part?”

 

“Of course!” Ms. Kiyoko said. “Embrace is a magazine that’s all about love stories, so if you wouldn’t mind, could you please share yours with me?”

 

Her… love story? “Oh. Right,” Jisoo said, clearing her throat. Ms. Kiyoko gestured for Krystal to go ahead and take a stab at the question first. She regaled them with the story of how she met her fiancé, Jongin, during orientation week in college. She was still dating someone back then, but Jongin had approached her at a party and asked her to dance so shyly and sweetly that she couldn’t say no. When she got drunk, he stayed behind to take care of her when her boyfriend ran off and joined a chugging competition. He proposed to her on Christmas Eve, beneath a mistletoe.

 

Ms. Kiyoko and Suzy both cooed with admiration at Krystal’s story, and then Krystal rolled up her sleeve as she showed off the huge diamond on her left hand. Jisoo ogled the gleaming rock and felt her stomach church. Suzy was up next, and she talked about her boyfriend, whom she almost met in college. It was during a Romantic Authors course and he took the seat next to her. They became such good friends that they decided to form a study group, and one night while “studying” things got a little carried away. At present, he was in culinary school and dreamed of opening his own restaurant. She had just moved in with him and they were thinking about adopting a dog.

 

Again, Ms. Kiyoko swooned. Jisoo’s nerves only grew more tense as Suzy’s story rolled on. Finally, everyone’s attention was on her, and she still hadn’t found a solution.

 

“Jisoo, what about you?” Ms. Kiyoko asked. “Is there someone special in your life? Or has there ever been?”

 

“Huh? Oh, it’s my turn! Right, uh… my love story… wow, where to begin?” Jisoo was sweating buckets. How did this happen? She had started the day out so confident. What should she do now?

 

She could lie. She was good at making up stories. But she was too nervous, and her creative juices couldn’t flow under this kind of pressure. In her head, she kept hearing Jennie say _just be yourself!_ She sighed. Well, Jennie. Here goes nothing:

 

“Well… actually, I, uh… I have actually never been in love.”

 

The room fell silent and then Ms. Kiyoko put on the most exaggerated frown Jisoo had ever seen. Suzy lifted a hand to her chest.

 

“Aww. That’s so sad!” Suzy said. “I’m so sorry!”

 

For a moment, Jisoo’s nerves calmed and she gave Suzy a puzzled expression. She laughed nervously.

 

“Oh, no, you don’t have to be,” Jisoo said. “It’s been an okay ride so far. I’m alright.”

 

“But you’ve really never been in love?” Krystal asked. Jisoo raised an eyebrow at her.

 

“Why would I lie about that?”

 

“You do understand that Embrace exclusively publishes pieces written for the romance genre, correct?” Ms. Kiyoko said, leaning forward on the table. “And if you get the position, your responsibilities will be to draft one story a week and handle submissions in the romance genre?”

 

Jisoo froze again. There was a little fire in her, yet, and it was threatening to turn into a blaze. But she kept herself calm and tried to keep a neutral face and voice when she answered:

 

“Yes, of course,” Jisoo said. Of course she knew that; she’d only been an Embrace subscriber for years now.

 

“I’ve read plenty of romance novels and written a few romance short stories myself,” Jisoo said. “They’re here in my portfolio. And I’ve read Embrace ever since I was a little girl, I’m more than familiar with the kind of material that belongs in the magazine and I—”

 

“But you’ve never been in _love_?” Ms. Kiyoko held her gaze. Jisoo opened her mouth to protest and tell her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have a boyfriend to adopt dogs with or wasn’t engaged to some boy who held her hair when she got piss-faced drunk. She could still write a damn good love story, and no one would have to know that she’d hadn’t even had her first kiss yet.

 

But she held it in.

 

“No, ma’am,” Jisoo said.

 

“Have you ever had a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?” Ms. Kiyoko asked.

 

“No… well, one time… actually, no. No, ma’am.”

 

Krystal and Suzy exchanged a look. Ms. Kiyoko scribbled something else on Jisoo’s resume, and Jisoo wanted to disappear completely. Ms. Kiyoko looked back up and flashed the girls a sugary smile.

 

“I see,” she said. “Shall we move on, then?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the interview, both Krystal and Suzy shook Ms. Kiyoko’s hand and left in good spirits. Jisoo bent down to collect her briefcase and then offered Ms. Kiyoko her hand for a shake. She was about to push the door open and leave, but something made her stay behind for a second.

 

No, Jisoo thought. She couldn’t let it end like this. She _had_ to land this job, she _had_ to take this step. Her future career as a serious writer depended on this interview. She was not about to give up now and go back to Kim’s Peaches and Plums so her father could say he had told her so. She had to fight.

 

“Ms. Kiyoko?” Jisoo said, whipping her head around to face the editor, who was gathering some papers back into her briefcase. Julie Kiyoko looked up and blinked.

 

“Jisoo? Can I help you?” She stuffed a stack of papers into her bag as Jisoo took a tentative step forward.

 

“Yes, well, actually I don’t know,” Jisoo said, heart pounding and voice shaking. “I just don’t really feel good about the interview we just had.”

 

Ms. Kiyoko looked up and gave her the same sugary sweet smile she’d been handing out throughout the whole interview. Come to think of it, she looked exactly like she did in her masthead photo, smiles and all.

 

“I think you’re a very strong candidate,” Julie Kiyoko said. “Just be patient, we’ll be in touch again soon.”

 

She went back to organizing her briefcase, but Jisoo still hadn’t left. She walked forward and bent down, trying to get Julie’s attention. There were butterflies in her stomach.

 

“Right, but actually I just wanted to…” Jisoo said, but her words trailed off at the end. Julie looked at her. Her sticky sweet smile was gone and she looked confused (and slightly irritated).

 

“Yes?” Ms. Kiyoko said. Jisoo took a deep breath.

 

“You used to be a staff writer for the break-ups section back in 2008,” Jisoo said slowly. “And what I admired most about your heroines were their gumption and also their commitment to honesty.”

 

“You read my stories back in ’08?” Ms. Kiyoko said, genuinely impressed. Jisoo nodded.

 

“I loved them. Anyway, can I be honest with you, Ms. Kiyoko?”

 

The editor stepped back and regarded the girl curiously. Her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her vintage glasses. “Alright,” she said. “Go ahead.”

 

Jisoo took another deep breath and composed herself.

 

“I know I’m the weakest candidate in the room,” Jisoo said, her voice rising in both tempo and volume. “Both Suzy and Krystal have awesome resumes, and they’re lit majors with actual editing experience and have taken courses on writing and they were on time and they interviewed really well. And by comparison, I’m just a business major who writes about movies and cup ramen twice a week and blogs about dogs, but let me just explain—”

 

“Jisoo—,” Ms. Kiyoko said, attempting to interrupt, but Jisoo only powered on:

 

“All my life, I have wanted to be a writer,” Jisoo said. “People kept telling me I was too smart for that or there wasn’t any money in it or it was an impractical, stupid, unattainable pipe dream, but I know that’s not true and I fought against all that negativity to work up the courage to be here today. I know I don’t have experience and my resume looks dismal but—“

 

“Jisoo—,”

 

“…but I _love_ Embrace and I know I can do well if I just get the chance. This could be the stepping stone that finally sets me on the path to achieving my dream, and I think that crossing my name off your list just because I’ve never had a boyfriend is—,”

 

“Jisoo! Look at me,” Julie Kiyoko said, finally able to edge her way into Jisoo’s tirade. Jisoo stopped talking and looked at the editor. She was out of breath from talking too much. Her face was hot again and her heart was pounding. Julie Kiyoko took all this in and sighed.

 

“I appreciate your honesty, so I’ll be honest with you, too. We like you. I like you. I can see you’re passionate about this. Suzy and Krystal have strong applications, that’s true, but I looked through your portfolio and I think your writing is the strongest among the three. We would love to have you on our team…”

 

“Really?” Jisoo said, her voice high and hopeful. Julie raised a finger to silence her.

 

“But your lack of romantic experience is still a serious disadvantage for you,” she said, swinging her briefcase strap around her shoulder.

 

“Embrace is about love,” Julie continued. “Everything we do here at this magazine is about finding and holding onto love. But you tell me that you’ve never been in love. How can I hire you when you lack the most basic qualifications of an Embrace writer? How will our readers feel being lectured to about relationships by a girl who’s never been in one?”

 

Jisoo fought back tears. She swallowed and spoke slowly but surely:

 

“I’ll find love with someone one day, it just hasn’t worked out for me,” she said gently. “But I am in _love_ with writing. And I am in _love_ with Embrace. This is the longest, deepest, and most important love affair I’ll ever have in my life. And if I don’t get this job, it’s _over_.”

 

Julie gave her another sad look.

 

“I’m sorry, Jisoo,” Ms. Kiyoko said. “The truth is I’d love to have you on our team, but I have the rest of my staff and the magazine to think about. If we’re going to thrive as a team, we all need to be on the same page. And you just aren’t there.”

 

Jisoo, unable to stand the disappointment, sat down in one of the chairs. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. She was too shocked to cry right now.

 

“So. I guess that’s it, then?” Jisoo said quietly. Julie Kiyoko pressed her lips into a thin line. It was true that she thought Jisoo the strongest candidate, but this one shortcoming was hard to simply look over. Still, it didn’t sit well with her being the reason for the ruination of a young girl’s otherwise promising career.

 

“There’s no need for the over-dramatics, dear. This is an easy fix, it’s not the end,” Julie said, putting on that smile again. She held her hands out to Jisoo and pulled her up to stand. Then, she escorted her out of the conference room and put both hands on her shoulders.

 

“I want you to walk out of here with your head held high,” she told Jisoo, who was still too stunned to react. “Then, I want you to find a nice boy or a nice girl, go on a date, and fall in love. Send me another application once you’ve found that. Then we’ll talk.”

 


	4. From Middle School

“It’s over. I’m done for. I’m ruined. My spark is gone. My lucky flower finally died on me. This is the end. I give up. I’ve lost. There’s no hope.”

 

Jisoo sunk deeper into the couch and touched the back of her wrist to her forehead like a fainting damsel. In the kitchen, Lisa was making ramen over the stove.

 

“Is she being overdramatic again?” she called from the kitchen. Rose, who was scrolling through Tinder on her phone, didn’t answer.

 

“No, I’m not,” Jisoo replied. “I’m… being realistic for once.”

 

“Yeah? How’s that going?” Lisa dropped the dried ramen noodles into the boiling pot. Jisoo pouted.

 

“Reality sucks,” she said. After the disastrous interview, Jisoo had come home to the apartment she shared with Jennie, Lisa, and Rose and vented to the girls. Rose immediately got to work setting up a profile for Jisoo on Tinder and a number of other dating sites, much to Jisoo’s chagrin. As a firm believer in serendipity, destiny, and fate, Jisoo was strictly against online dating. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

 

Rose always insisted that she was a regular, down-to-earth college girl, but Jisoo knew that she came from old money. She drove a red Mustang and was the CEO of her own cupcake startup, liked wearing pearls, revered her mother’s dating advice, and insisted that she and Lisa call Jisoo “unni” even thought Jisoo said her first name was perfectly fine. Rosewas the more conservative girl in their foursome, which was why Jisoo was taken slightly aback when she suggested online dating.

 

She sat with her knees crossed on the blue couch that her parents had donated to the girls’ apartment, carefully examining each profile and occasionally asking Jisoo if she liked any of the guys that popped up. She had curlers in her hair and was wearing a red silk bathrobe that an old boyfriend had bought for her.

 

“Oooh! What about this guy?” Rose said, turning the screen to Jisoo. “His name’s Taecyeon. His profile picture is of him in the Bahamas. He’s shirtless, and I like what I’m seeing. What about him? Left or right?”

 

Jisoo took her hand from her head and looked at the screen.

 

“Hmm. He sorta looks like a meathead, not my type,” she said before leaning back into the cushions. Rose looked hurt.

 

“What? He’s cute, and check out the six pack!” Rose said.

 

“Left,” Jisoo said, pointing her finger to the left. Rose swiped left and another profile came into view.

 

“Ok, well how about this guy? He’s cute.” Jisoo looked at the screen, at yet another solid, muscular boy at a beach.

 

“Left,” she said.

 

“What about this guy? Wait, never mind. Too old,” Rose said. All of a sudden, Jisoo’s phone chimed. She reached for it and her lit up at the notification.

 

“Ooh, someone matched with me,” she said, sitting up. Rose put her phone down and scooted up next to Jisoo to see the screen.

 

“Really, who?” Rose said. She looked down at the photo and raised an brow. “ _That_ guy?”

 

Jisoo scoffed. “There is no need for that tone,” she said. “ _I’m_ the one who’s going to date him not you.”

 

“I thought you said ‘meathead’ wasn’t your type?”

 

“What? How can you say that?” Jisoo said, slightly offended. “He’s _not_ a meathead, look, he’s holding a camera. He’s probably a photographer or something. It’s artsy! And his arms are nice. And we matched!”

 

“Ok, fine. Then send him a message.”

 

“No!” Jisoo said, holding her phone against her chest. “ _I’m_ not going to message him, _he’s_ going to message me. That’s how it works, right? There, see? He messaged me. And he said hi, so I will say hello back.”

 

Lisa ran over from the kitchen and looked over Jisoo’s shoulder as she typed into the chatbox: “Hi.” She added a smiley face for good measure. The girls held their breath as three little dots danced on the screen, indicating that he was texting back.

 

“What are you up to?” the stranger said.

 

“What am I up to?” Jisoo said, looking to Lisa and Rose. “What should I say?”

 

“Uh, tell him you’re just relaxing at home,” Lisa suggested, and Jisoo typed:

 

“Nothing much, just relaxing at home. You?”

 

Sent. A minute later, the stranger wrote back: “Relaxing at home, too. Wanna see?”

 

“See what?” Jisoo asked, but before she could even ask him that question, he had sent a photo. Of himself, completely naked with one hand wrapped tightly around his…

 

“I _hate_ online dating,” Jisoo said, rolling her eyes so hard, she was sure she’d give herself an aneurysm. Both Lisa and Rose groaned as Jisoo exited the chat room.

 

“Seriously? What part of ‘I’m just relaxing at home’ makes him think that means ‘please send me a picture of your junk?’” Lisa said. “Men are literally the worst. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. Anyone want ramen?”

 

“Block him,” Rose said, taking Jisoo’s phone and hitting the “block” button. “Just move on to the next profile. There’s tons of hot guys in this area, we’re smack dab in the middle of college town. Don’t worry, unni, we are _going_ to get you a date.”

 

“I don’t think I can do this,” Jisoo said, standing up and going into the kitchen to eat Lisa’s ramen.

 

“Yes, you can!” Rose said, following her. Jisoo took a pair of chopsticks from the drawer and began eating the noodles straight from the pot.

 

“I’m an old lady by today’s dating standards,” Jisoo said, leaning against the counter. “And we already know that these guys aren’t going to be into me. No one has before. I should just give up.”

 

“Hey!” Rose said, snatching Jisoo’s chopsticks and holding her gaze with steady intensity. “I will _not_ tolerate this disgusting display of low self-esteem! My mama always said that a girl’s best feature is her confidence. Come on, let’s keep looking. Half the population of this city are men, we are going to find one for you to fall in love with, and you are _getting_ that job!”

 

“Hey, you know what?” Lisa said, jumping up onto the counter and chewing on a granola bar. “What about Jaebum? Your cute TA?”

 

Jisoo’s eyes widened. “No,” she said. “Hard pass.”

 

“Why not?” Lisa asked, waving her granola bar at Jisoo. “You already like him and—“

 

“I know, but… I don’t know, I just can’t,” Jisoo said, taking her chopsticks back from Rose. “I’m sorry, I’m crazy. I think he’s cute and he’s smart and he’s really cool, but I just can’t think straight when I’m around him, I don’t need that kind of stress.”

 

“Just out of curiosity, unni, why haven’t you ever dated anyone?” Rose asked, taking a chair from the dining room and sitting in it like it was story time. Jisoo shrugged.

 

“Because boys don’t like me,” she said.

 

“Hey!” Rose said, wagging a finger at her. Jisoo took a deep breath and was silent for a second.

 

“I don’t know. I guess I just… I never found the right person,” Jisoo said. She poured the ramen into a mug and sat down at the dining table.

 

“You know me, I’m a ‘ready, set, go’ kind of person, I see what I want, I want it, and I go after it,” Jisoo continued. “But I just never felt that way toward anybody.”

 

“No one?” Lisa asked, tossing out the granola bar wrapper.

 

Jisoo shocked her head.

 

“I mean, I’ve had crushes, I’ve been on plenty of first and second dates,” she continued. “But nothing ever happened after that.”

 

She sloshed the noodles around in the mug and listened to her heart beating. The other girls were waiting for her to continue.

 

“I may not always know what I want from my life,” Jisoo said slowly. “But I know what I _don’t_ want. What I don’t want is to be stuck doing a job I hate, and likewise, I don’t want any kind of romance that isn’t the real deal. I know what kind of man I want, and I know what kind of love story I want my life to be. I know some people might think that’s harsh or stupid of me, but that’s where I stand and I’m going to keep standing there.”

 

As a show of her determination, Jisoo sat up straighter in her chair and crossed her arms. Neither Lisa nor Rose spoke for a while. Jisoo stood to put her mug in the sink and Rose turned in her chair to face her.

 

“While I admire your commitment to your own beliefs, unni,” Lisa said carefully. “This is the 21st century. We’re not princesses sitting around in ivory towers waiting for handsome princes to rescues us from dragons anymore.”

 

She jumped down from the counter and started to help Jisoo load their dishes into the dishwasher.

 

“You said so yourself that you’re the kind of girl who goes after what she wants,” Lisa continued. “If you want love that badly, it’s not enough to just sit around and wait for the right person to walk into your life.”

 

“You want true love?” Rose said, joining them at the counter. “True love isn’t like it is in a chick lit novel, unni. What if the prince never comes? What if your dark, brooding, mysterious male lead only exists in your romance novels? What’ll you do, then?”

 

She was right, of course. They both were. Jisoo admired the heroines in her books who took charge. The ones who made the first move and texted a boy first. Rose, Lisa, and Jennie were all girls like that. They’d all had dates and boyfriends before. Jisoo was one hundred percent a supporter of girls making their own destinies and carving out their own paths in love.

 

But Jisoo couldn’t help it. It was what she wanted. She wanted the fairy tale, she wanted the kind of sweeping, glorious, breathtaking romance that people wrote about and read about. And if it didn’t exist… then…

 

“I’ll adopt some cats, I guess,” Jisoo said, trying to lighten the mood. “And I’ll sign up for a monthly wine subscription.”

 

Lisa and Rose giggled, but the fun was cut short when Jisoo heard her phone buzzing from the couch. She quickly dried her hands and hopped over to the living room to check the caller ID. It was coming from a number she didn’t recognize. Normally, she would have just ignored the call altogether, but then she realized that Julie Kiyoko did say she would be in touch soon. A week had passed, surely this must be her.

 

“Oh my god,” Jisoo said.

 

“Who is it? Oh my god, what if it’s that creep?” Rose asked. “How’d he get your number?”

 

“I… I think it might be Julie Kiyoko, or someone from Embrace!” Lisa and Rose both gasped in surprise. Jisoo shushed them and ran into the hallway. “Guys, quiet! Hello?”

 

“Hello?” said the _male_ voice on the other line. Jisoo furrowed her brow.

 

“Ms. Kiyoko?” she said carefully.

 

“Uh… Jisoo?” said the voice again. A man. It’s definitely a man. Oh god. What if it _was_ that creep from Tinder?

 

“This is Jisoo. Is this Julie Kiyoko?” she asked, just because.

 

“No,” he said. “It’s Park Jinyoung.”

 

“Oh,” she said, trying not to panic. She didn’t recognize his name or his voice, it _must_ be the weirdo. “Are you her secretary?” Don’t freak out. Just calmly pretend it’s the wrong number and end the call.

 

“No. I’m not a secretary,” he said, a slight tinge of irritation lining his voice. “It’s me. Park Jinyoung.”

 

“I think you have the wrong number, then, sorry!” Jisoo said.

 

“Wait!”

 

But she had already ended the call. Disaster avoided. God, online dating really was the worst. Jisoo was about to rejoin the other girls in the dining room when her phone began to ring again with a call from the same number. Jisoo braced herself to answer and tell him again that he had the wrong number.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Jisoo?” said the voice. Jisoo was going to shout at him, but something about the way he said her name that time was strangle familiar. It made her stomach twist up into a knot.

 

“Who is this?” she asked.

 

“Park Jinyoung! Remember?”

 

“I seriously think you have the wrong number,” Jisoo said.

 

“From middle school!” he said just as Jisoo was about to hit the end call button again. Jisoo paused a moment, the strangers voice taking her back in time. Ten years back to the first time she heard that voice calling her Kim Peachu on her first day of school. She bristled. He couldn’t be.

 

“Jinyoung?” she said, quietly so that the girls couldn’t hear.

 

“Yes,” he sighed. She could practically hear him rolling his eyes over the phone.

 

“How…?” she said, closing her eyes and clenching a fist. “What do you want?”

 

Jinyoung scoffed over the receiver: “Yeah, nice to hear from you, too.”

 

“How did you even get my number? Have you been stalking me?” she said.

 

“What? No. Of course not,” Jinyoung said defensively. “Your dad gave me this number.”

 

Jisoo’s eyes widened at the thought of Jinyoung talking to her dad. Jinyoung at Kim’s Peaches and Plums, walking around the grove, going inside the house she grew up in, and talking to her dad about her, no doubt gathering more ammo for insults to hurl at her. The image made her blood boil. How dare he?

 

“You talked to me dad? You _have_ been stalking me!”

 

“I just…” she could hear his frustration over the phone. “Never mind, whatever. Anyway, you’ve heard about Mr. Hong haven’t you?”

 

Her shoulders relaxed at the mention of Mr. Hong. He was a sweet man. She had his class when she was thirteen. That was the year she finally decided she wanted to become a writer. He was one of her most fervent supporters. She may not have had the confidence to do it if it weren’t for him.

 

“Yeah, of course I have,” she said, her voice sad. “Cancer, right? So awful.”

 

“Right,” Jinyoung said, his voice going soft, too. “Actually, he passed away.”

 

The room went cold and silent.

 

“What? When?” she asked, her voice shaking.

 

“A few weeks ago.”

 

Jisoo bit down on her lip. Everything was so quiet, all she could hear was her own pounding heartbeat and Jinyoung’s breathing on the phone.

 

“He was one of my favorite teachers,” she said, mostly to herself. “I’ll miss him.”

 

“Me, too,” Jinyoung said.

 

No one said anything for a few seconds, and just when it was becoming awkward, Jinyoung cleared his throat: “Anyway,” he said. “I went back home to go to his funeral, and his wife passed me this envelope. Apparently, he wrote letters to the both of us before he died.”

 

“A letter?” Jisoo said, switching the phone to her other ear. “I didn’t get anything.”

 

“No, you didn’t. Yours is with me, his wife passed them both to me.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said, not liking the direction that this conversation was going. “Well, do you have a pen. Just mail mine to me.”

 

“Yeah. Actually… Mr. Hong wanted me to give it to you in person.”

 

Jisoo closed her eyes and groaned silently. She was afraid he would say that: “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

 

“No, it’s not,” Jinyoung said. “But he specifically said, in _writing_ , that I’m supposed to give it to you in person. The last thing he wrote in his letter to me was asking me for a favor. He wants the two of us to grab lunch and catch up.”

 

Jisoo almost burst out laughing at the thought: “Why? There’s nothing to catch up on.”

 

“I don’t know, that’s just what he wrote to me,” Jinyoung said. He hesitated before continuing: “Mr. Hong was my favorite teacher, too.”

 

Jisoo raised her brow at him.

 

“That was kind of a dark time for me and he helped me get through it, I owe him a lot,” Jinyoung said, his voice getting deeper. “I’m just trying to honor his memory by carrying out this one last thing he’s asking of me. You think I actually _wanted_ to talk to you right now? Considering all the shit I’ve already been through this month?”

 

“ _Don’t_ talk to me about having a shitty month,” Jisoo said, mustering as much venom as she could into her voice. “I’ve been through enough shit this month to last me until well past graduation.”

 

“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?” he said suddenly.

 

“What?”

 

“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”

 

Was this supposed to be a joke? Jisoo scoffed. As if she’d actually agree to get lunch with _him_ , her nemesis from middle school.

 

“Maybe. But I—”

 

“Good,” Jinyoung interrupted. “Your dad told me you go to Eastern University. I go to Southern Tech. I made a reservation at Heather’s, it’s on 12th and Pine, halfway between our two schools. 12:30 tomorrow. Be there. Or don’t. It’s on your conscience, but I’m not gonna be the one disappointing our dead teacher.”

 

He hung up as soon as the last word was out of his mouth, and Jisoo was furious. What a joke. She loved Mr. Hong with all her heart, but this had to be some kind of cruel joke. If Jinyoung actually thought that his guilt tactics would work on her, he had another thing coming.


	5. Catching Up

She was late.

 

Jinyoung checked the time on his phone and sighed. It was almost 1 pm and there was still no sign of Jisoo. Typical. He should have expected that she’d be a no-show. Served him right trying to depend on her. He sat alone at a table in the middle of Heather’s, a trendy, sunny sandwich bistro that had just opened up halfway between Eastern University and Southern Technical. There was lunch rush going on and the waitress had come to check on him twice already, so there was a crowd of people around to witness him being stood up.

 

Stop. He mentally scolded himself for thinking in those terms. He wasn’t being stood up. This wasn’t a date. This was just a favor he was doing for a dead man, but he supposed even that wasn’t happening anymore either.

 

Jinyoung sighed. He reached down into his backpack and pulled out a library book about cognitive disorders and opened it up to a dog-eared page. He supposed that as long as he had the reservation, he may as well have lunch on his own and get some studying in before his lab later.

 

He pressed his lips into a thin line and concentrated on the words in the book. He hated that he felt disappointed at Jisoo no-showing him. Since when did he care what Jisoo did or didn’t do? He turned a page and kept reading, only looking up once in a while, hoping to get a waiter’s attention so he could place a lunch order. When one finally walked past him, though, he didn’t speak loud enough to be noticed.

 

That was when he saw her.

 

Jinyoung didn’t have to try very hard to remember the very first time he saw Jisoo, which was nearly ten years ago. Walking into Heather’s, she wore a white shirt and a wide-eyed, slightly worried look on her face. Jinyoung thought she looked much the same now as she did that first day of school when he first saw her:

 

Beautiful.

 

Jisoo was looking above people’s heads. When she finally spotted him from the doorway, she stopped and stared at him for a minute with a look of surprise. Then the expression disappeared and was replaced by a grimace. Jinyoung sighed as he dog-eared the page he left off of. Of course, this was Kim Jisoo. A beautiful face ruined by a poor attitude. He knew that well enough from middle and high school. Here it goes.

 

Jisoo crossed the length of the restaurant. As soon as she reached his table, Jinyoung said:

 

“You’re late. The reservation was at 12:30.”

 

Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re the one who didn’t give me a chance to say anything before you hung up yesterday,” she said. “You said 12:30, but my lunch break isn’t until 12:50, and I’m not crossing my boss on your account.”

 

“Whatever,” Jinyoung said. “Have a seat.”

 

She pulled the chair out and sat down on the other end of the table. A waiter finally came by to take their orders. Jinyoung noticed a lot more about Jisoo now that she was sitting in front of him. She had slimmed out since high school. Not that she was ever a big girl, but the stubborn baby fat that clung to her cheeks as a teenager had gone. She had tidied up a bit, too. He remembered her coming to school with daisy-chains on her head and dirt crusted under her fingernails. Now, her hair was smooth and smelled faintly of strawberries and her nails were manicured. 

 

“I think you have something that belongs to me,” she said after the waiter left. Jisoo was eager to get to the heart of their meeting today. Jinyoung reached into his bag again and pulled out the envelope with Jisoo’s name on it. She ripped it open and pulled the stationary out as soon as she had it in her hands.

 

 _Dear Jisoo_ , the letter read. She read the letter, savoring every word her old teacher had written. The words took her back to middle school, to those days she spent sitting in Mr. Hong’s classroom, growing her vocabulary and slowly but surely planting the seeds that would blossom into her dream of becoming a writer. The letter briefly recalled a meeting between Jisoo and her teacher.

 

It was the day after their essays were due. They were asked to write up to 1000 words on what they wanted to be when they grew up. At that point, Jisoo had no idea. She had always liked books and coming up with fanciful stories, but her father had discouraged her from thinking of it as a serious job. Mr. Hong, after reading her essay, called her to his desk after school one day and praised her essay.

 

Jisoo had written about her mother’s death when she was eight, and how the loss of a single person made her realize that life was unpredictable. It could be long or short, smooth or rocky and oftentimes, a combination of both. In the grand scheme of things, a person’s lifetime would comprise just an infinitesimal speck in the history of the universe. Therefore, she believed that the best she could ever hope to be when she grew up was happy. Happiness, that’s all.

 

Jisoo tried to hold in her tears as she read the closing words of Mr. Hong’s letter: “I hope you’re happy, Jisoo. If not, then I hope you’ll find happiness. And when you do, I hope you’ll have the courage not to let it go.”

 

In his post-script to her, Mr. Hong wrote: “Please, try to get in touch with Park Jinyoung. I wanted to have lunch with the two of you before I passed, but since I won’t be here much longer, I’ll trust the two of you to meet up without me.”

 

Jisoo folded the letter back up gently and then looked at Jinyoung. He’d been watching her while she read the letter and there was a curious expression on his face. Jisoo cleared her throat.

 

“He really did want the two of us to catch up over lunch,” she conceded with a sharp tone. Jinyoung didn’t appreciate that.

 

“Why would I lie about that?” he said. Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him.

 

“I don’t know,” she said, putting the letter down and crossing her arms. “People lie about all sorts of different things, you could be a liar, too.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “No,” he said, leaning forward. “That’s you.”

 

Jisoo rolled her eyes.

 

“Look, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to actually enjoy my lunch break and remember my favorite teacher fondly. We don’t always have to be fighting.”

 

Jinyoung shrugged. “That’s fine with me.”

 

A waiter came by to fill their glasses with water and deliver a basket of bread as an appetizer. She promised their food would be out soon and then left them alone to converse.

 

“Since when do you go to Southern Tech?” Jisoo asked, grabbing a breadstick. Jinyoung took a drink of water.

 

“Since four years ago,” he answered.

 

“Let me guess,” Jisoo said, her mouth half full of bread. “You’re studying to be a litigator or something.”

 

“A doctor, actually.” Jinyoung picked up a small flyer at the edge of the table and started reading the back of it. Jisoo tilted her head at him

 

“Huh,” she said. Jinyoung furrowed his brows at her.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing,” Jisoo said, raising her arms in surrender. “I just didn’t have you pegged as a ‘saving lives’ kind of guy. Who knew? Where’s the precedent for that?”

 

Her comment hurt. The promise of being able to save lives was precisely what drew Jinyoung to the pre-med program at Southern Tech. It was exactly why he wanted to be a doctor in the first place. Did he really seem like the wrong type of person for it? He shrugged.

 

“I guess it runs in my family,” he said.

 

Jisoo paused, midway through spreading butter over a roll. She looked up at Jinyoung slowly and didn’t miss the look of hurt in his eyes. Shit. She’d forgotten that there was a nerve there. She’d forgotten that his father was the fire chief who died.

 

“I didn’t… I didn’t mean that,” she said quietly, the first thing she said that she meant all afternoon. Jinyoung shook his head gently.

 

“It’s okay,” he said. “Anyway, Mr. Hong wanted us to do this so we could catch up. You go to Eastern? Let me guess, you’re studying literature.”

 

“Business, actually,” Jisoo said, covering her mouth full of bread. A wait came and brought Jisoo her food. She had ordered dessert even though it was just past 1 in the afternoon and she hadn’t had a proper lunch yet.

 

“Not literature?” Jinyoung asked, crossing his arms. There was a curious look on his face.

 

“No,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung leaned forward.

 

“I thought you wanted to be a writer.”

 

“I did,” Jisoo said. “I still do. This is just a temporary thing. I’m trying to be sensible about my future, I can write whenever I want, but I still need to have a job.”

 

“Did your decision to study business have anything to do with your dad’s business?” Jinyoung asked. “I’m guessing he wants you to come home and take over the orchard.”

 

Jisoo didn’t know why she bristled every time someone mentioned her father’s orchard, the peach farm that she grew up on. She especially became tense anytime the person who brought that up was Park Jinyoung. He was, after all, the reason why she felt like she could never escape that peach farm when she was in middle school.

 

“How did you know that?” Jisoo asked, her tone becoming defensive. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Just a guess,” he said, amused. “I never had you pegged as a sellout.”

 

Jisoo was about to bite into her tiramisu, but she stopped and cast a venomous look at Jinyoung instead.

 

“I’m not a sellout,” she said, her voice low and determined. “It’s not selling out to do something you don’t want to do to make someone you love happy. It’s not selling out to put your dreams on hold to take care of something important. It’s not selling out when you’re trying your hardest but things—”

 

“Alright. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Jinyoung said, putting a hand out to stop her. “It wasn’t what I meant. But what are you going to do with your business degree, then? I thought you wanted to write books, what happens to that?”

 

“Why do you care?” Jisoo asked, putting her fork down and crossing her arms. Again, Jinyoung felt hurt by her tone.

 

“You think I _shouldn’t_ care?” he asked.

 

“I think you haven’t cared _ever_ , so why start now?”

 

Jinyoung stared long and hard at Jisoo. Did she really think he was so heartless as to not care about a former classmate’s prospects? Evidently, she still only thought of him as the bully from her youth.

 

“You still don’t get it, do you?” he said.

 

“What don’t I get?” Jisoo said.

 

“You still think I hate you, don’t you?” Jinyoung leaned back in his chair and scoffed. Jisoo gave him a confused look.

 

“Well, yeah,” she said. “You’ve done nothing but tease me and sabotage me and call me names—”

 

“Call you names?”

 

“—since middle school, and you fought me tooth and nail every time I even came close to beating you at something, so, yes, I can only assume you probably hate me!”

 

Jinyoung glowered.

 

“I think you’re unnecessarily defensive about everything and you blow things out of proportion and you’re kind of hypocritical and overdramatic at times and you have a competitive streak,” Jinyoung said. “But I don’t hate you. I don’t hate people. That’s not me.”

 

That wasn’t entirely true, however. Jinyoung did hate _some_ people, just not many, and he definitely _didn’t_ hate Jisoo, even if she did get on his nerves and they argued all the time and she once lied just to get him in trouble. Jinyoung didn’t often hate people, but people like his ex-girlfriend Nawon and his ex-friend Mark were making him understand where the logic in hate came from.

 

He looked over at Jisoo and she was still crossing her arms and brooding in her seat. She didn’t believe him. Figures, he thought.

 

“In any case,” he said, ignoring her indignant reaction. This was starting to get tiring.

 

“I don’t hate you, not even right now,” he said. “Although you are starting to seriously annoy me. Look, I didn’t invite you out here because I wanted to argue about the past. I still maintain that you’re misremembering everything that happened in middle school, but I digress. I’m an hour and a half away from a really important exam and I’m kind of getting over a major personal crisis and I’ve got a night shift later. So can we just sit here and enjoy a pleasant lunch like civilized people?”

 

He waited a long time for Jisoo to reply. But even she had to admit that she, too, was tired of fighting now, and she really did want to try the cake. _He_ was the one misremembering, not her. But for now…

 

“Fine,” she said. She dipped her fork into the tiramisu and finally tried it. In the silence that followed, Jisoo’s mind drifted back to Embrace. Before Jinyoung called yesterday, she had been planning to make a trip to the offices to inquire about the status other application, but she saw that she’d have to shelve that errand for now. Besides, she supposed it wouldn’t even matter since she hadn’t found someone to date in the week following the interview. Much less, someone she could actually fall in love with. Her online dating search was fruitless, her dating prospects a desolate wasteland.

 

If she had any chance of landing that job, she’d need to come up with an alternate solution. One that didn’t require online dating or falling in love at all.

 

Jinyoung gave a sigh of relief, but just as the conversation was lunch to a close, a girl with orange hair ran up to their table. Jisoo looked up and recognized Lisa.

 

“Unni, you’re here!” Lisa said, clutching a brown take-out bag. Jisoo was a little stunned to see her and could only say:

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You dirty liar,” Lisa said jokingly. “You told me you have errands to run and that’s why you didn’t wanna get lunch with me!”

 

“I am running an errand, though,” Jisoo said. “A dead man’s errand.”

 

“Oh, if I knew you’d be here, I would’ve ordered dine-in instead of takeout,” Lisa whined. Whenever she whined, she always acted like a pouting puppy. Jisoo was amused.

 

“You still can,” Jisoo said, gesturing towards an empty chair that she could pull up to the table. But Lisa shook her head wildly.

 

“What? No! Of course I can’t,” Lisa said and then she eyed Jinyoung suggestively. “I don’t wanna ruin your date. You sneaky little bug, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!”

 

Jinyoung tried to laugh and scoff at the same time, but it sounded more as if he had choked. He shook his head at the orange-haired girl.

 

“I’m _not_ her boyfriend,” he said. “This isn’t even a date.”

 

Jinyoung checked his watch again and saw time passing. He tossed his cognitive disorders book back into his bag and zipped it up as he stood.

 

“And actually, I do have to get to a lab soon,” he said to Lisa. “So if you wanna take my chair, be my guest. I did what I came to do, that’s that. Nice seeing you again, I guess.”

 

Jisoo had a bit of cake in her mouth. She finished chewing and bade him a simple, careless goodbye. He gave her a curt nod and walked out the door. Lisa watched his back as he exited, and once he was gone, she slid into his now vacant chair.

 

“Geez, what a grump,” Lisa said. “I should have known he wasn’t your boyfriend soon as he opened his mouth.”

 

“If you knew more about him, you’d know why his being my boyfriend is entirely impossible,” Jisoo said.

 

“What’s his name?”

 

“Park Jinyoung,” Jisoo said. “I knew him in middle school. It wasn’t a great time. We aren’t friends.”

 

“Oh,” Lisa said. “That’s too bad, he was kind of cute. Looks like one of those reliable, bring-him-home-to-meet-the-parents, do-gooder types.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. She tried to picture bringing Jinyoung home to meet her father. Though she supposed she didn’t have to picture it since he’d already met her father. On several occasions. In fact, her dad even sort of liked him, if memory served.

 

“I do feel a little bad that I kind of ran him out of here,” Lisa said, opening up a menu. “Do you think I said something wrong?”

 

Aside from calling him my boyfriend? Jisoo thought. She still couldn’t believe Lisa had thought she was on a date with Park Jinyoung. Though she supposed the seating arrangement and her earlier vagueness about the nature of the meeting could have fooled anyone.

 

“No, I think you…” Jisoo’s voice dropped out as an idea suddenly came to her. “You…are a total genius, Lisa.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone curious about what the heck happened to Jisoo and Jinyoung in middle school to make them hate each other, Jisoo's version of the events comes next chapter. Thanks!


	6. Misremembering

 

Even before she decided to be a writer, Jisoo had always had an over-active imagination.

 

She transferred to a new middle school when she was twelve because of bullies at her last school. But she knew that there were bad kids everywhere, which was why it was crucial that make she a good impression on her very first day.

 

She’d had no friends at her last school. The kids were mean at her last school, even though Jisoo had tried hard to be friends with them. She would try to share her books with them or make up stories for them, but no one was impressed. No one there ever saw her as anything else other than a stupid, air headed farm girl who spent too much time with her head in the clouds, making up stupid stories. Once, they swore her plump face was even shaped like a peach. The children actively withheld their affection from her and teased her mercilessly. They would take her lunch and smash it under their feet right in front of her, or they’d open up a cup of diced peaches and dump it over her head, and they’d call her names: Peach Girl, Kim Peachu.

 

She fidgeted with the uniform skirt and adjusted her blouse all morning, and then decided that her hair was too flat and boring. So before climbing into her dad’s truck and driving over for the first day, she ran out into the yard and plucked some flowers to make a daisy chain to wear on her head, never mind that digging around in the yard lodged some dirt under her nails.

 

“We have a transfer student today, boys and girls!” the male teacher said enthusiastically as he signaled for the children to take their seats. Jisoo stood just outside the door, waiting to be called inside while she rehearsed her introduction in her head.

 

 _Please like me, please like me_. _Please, please, please let them like me_ , Jisoo chanted in her head. She reached into her pocket and clutched her lucky purple flower.

 

“Jisoo, do you want to come in and introduce yourself?” the teacher asked. Jisoo, heart pounding, stepped into the classroom and put on the brightest smile she could muster.

 

Everyone’s eyes were on her. So far, none of the kids looked mean. They just looked kind of curious. She was trying hard to control her breathing. She kept smiling.

 

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Kim Jisoo. I’m twelve. I’m…” she tried to remember what she rehearsed. “I am… really happy to meet you all. I… I hope we can be friends.”

 

The room was quiet, and Jisoo was afraid she’d said something wrong. She looked at all their faces and couldn’t read anyone’s emotions. Her smile started to falter, but then her teacher stepped in.

 

“Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself?” he said. “What sorts of things do you like?”

 

Jisoo, grateful for the gentle prompting, nodded. “I like to read books,” she said.

 

“Very good,” said her teacher. “What kinds of books do you like?”

 

“All sorts,” she said. “I read fantasy and adventure books and scary ones. Funny ones and fantasy ones are my favorite. But sometimes I don’t like the way they end, so I just imagine that it goes differently.”

 

Her teacher looked amused at her answer. “Interesting,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to be a writer someday?”

 

Jisoo raised her brows. She hadn’t ever really considered that. But now that he mentioned it…

 

“That would be nice,” she said.

 

“So where are you from? Where do you live?”

 

Jisoo’s face fell. _Oh no_. She couldn’t tell the kids that she lived on a peach farm. What if they think I’m just some stupid farm girl? What if they get peach cups and dump them over my head? What if they start calling me—

 

“Wait! Aren’t you that peach girl?” said a boy sitting in the center of the room. Jisoo looked up and stared at him with alarm. How? How did he know? How dare he? The rest of the classroom turned and looked at the boy, too, and they started whispering among themselves. Jisoo started panicking. No. Don’t listen to him, she thought.

 

“Kim Peachu!” the boy said. The children started giggling, but the boy looked confused. Jisoo’s heart started pounding. The teacher clapped his hands, demanding the children’s attention.

 

“That’s enough,” the teacher said, and then he turned his gaze over to the boy who spoke up. “Jinyoung, what did I say about talking without raising your hand? It’s very rude.”

 

The boy, Jinyoung, looked sheepishly down at his hands and apologized. After that, the teacher decided that Jisoo had introduced herself well enough and then instructed her to take the empty desk, which happened to be the one in front of the boy, Jinyoung. Jisoo walked toward her empty desk slowly, trying not to look up, thinking that if she did, all she’d see were the boys and girls’ judgmental stares. As she got closer to her desk and saw the boy who called her Kim Peachu, her blood began to boil. He _ruined_ her first impression.

 

The lesson started shortly after she took her seat. Jisoo took out her notebook and tried to forget the last ten minutes and just focus on math. But about halfway through the lesson, she heard the boy behind her scooting his seat up and leaning forward.

 

“Hey!” he whispered in her ear. “You live on the peach farm, right?”

 

Jisoo tensed in her seat. She tried to ignore him, pretend she didn’t hear. But he didn’t quit.

 

“Is the farmer your dad?” he asked. “I’ve been there once!”

 

Jisoo still ignored him, though she had started clenching her fists. This boy just didn’t know when to stop. He just kept talking and rubbing it in that he knew who she was, knew that was just a stupid country girl.

 

“My mom bought two dozen peaches, but half of them went bad and we never got to eat them. But they were good!”

 

“Stop talking to me!” Jisoo shouted, slamming a fist down on her desk and turning around to give the boy a poisonous glare. He was so startled that he nearly fell off his chair. The children were all staring at her now, equally stunned looks on all their faces. The teacher calmed everyone down and scolded her for shouting in the middle of class.

 

Great. Day one and she was already getting on the teacher’s bad side. Jisoo gave the boy one more glare before turning back to her notebook. This was all _his_ fault. Now _everyone_ knew where she came from _and_ he made her look stupid in front of the whole class _and_ he made her lose her temper in front of the teacher. She _hated_ him.

 

For the next couple of weeks, Jinyoung wouldn’t let up. No matter how many times she yelled at him to stop, he kept leaning forward in his desk and trying to talk to her. Evidently, he hadn’t realized just how much she despised him since his little stunt on the first day of school. Jisoo, meanwhile, tried to ignore him as best as she could and focus on the lessons.

 

Which were much harder than she realized. At her old school, it was hard to focus on the work, especially when she was constantly watching for kids who might pull on her hair or dump peaches on her head or snatch her work and crumple it up. She was on defense mode all the time, she didn’t even realize that she was falling behind in school.

 

She’d stay up in her room agonizing over her homework hours. Literature class and art class were easy enough, but math and science were hard. She wanted so badly to catch up with the other kids and prove to them that she wasn’t stupid or air headed.

 

One day, while working on a problem sheet in class, she heard Jinyoung scooting his seat forward again and she bristled. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel like looming over her shoulder, no doubt coming up with his latest sly insult.

 

“You have to move the decimal to the right,” he said. “It’s multiplying by tens.”

 

Jisoo rolled her eyes.

 

“Leave me alone,” she said. But he didn’t.

 

“You have to shift the decimal to the left in the coefficient,” he whispered. “It’s scientific notation.”

 

“I know that! Leave me alone!”

 

“But you’re doing it wrong,” Jinyoung said. “I can help you if you don’t get it.”

 

“I get it! I’m not stupid!”

 

“I didn’t say—”

 

“Just leave me alone!” Jisoo felt so embarrassed that he’d seen her making mistakes on her problem sheet, but she couldn’t just let the other kids see him helping her. What would they think? They’d know that she couldn’t do scientific notation and then no one would want to be friends with an idiot. Was he only offering to help because he thought she couldn’t do this on her own?

 

She’d show him. Jisoo went home that day and sat at her desk and didn’t move until she could do scientific notation like no one’s business. She sat there and tried to come up with a story that would help her remember how to do it. Then, she opened up her textbook and taught herself the next two or three lessons. When the teacher finally got to them in class, she wowed everyone by knowing all the answers and being the first one to finish her problem set.

 

After that, a couple of girls approached Jisoo and asked her to help them learn scientific notation, too. Finally, she thought. Friends.

 

It wasn’t long before Jisoo was starting to build up a reputation as one of the best students in their grade. And she was happy and proud. The only problem was that as she got better, so did Jinyoung. The two of them were constantly battling for the spot at the top of the class. Jisoo now viewed him with an air of rivalry, and she hated him even more. Sometimes, while looking at the class rankings on the wall, he’d look at their name and then turn to her with a smile. How smug of him, she thought.

 

The following year, they were in the same class again, and as the top students, they became class co-representatives. When the school fair came around, they both had to stand at the front of the room and help their classmates brainstorm ideas for booths and decorations and entertainment. The theme was “the future is looking bright.” Jisoo pitched an essay-writing segment. Students could write a short piece on what they wanted to be when they grew up, and the best ones would be displayed in the hall for visitors to read. As class reps, Jinyoung and Jisoo would help their teacher, Mr. Hong, judge which essays were the best.

 

Immediately, she went home and tried to think of what to write. She sat with an open notebook for hours, terrified that she may not come up with a piece that was good enough. She had homework to do and a school fair to worry over. Inspiration was eluding her. In the end, she wrote about happiness. It was sloppy and unpolished, she knew that. But as the best writer in the class, she simply assumed that even her half-assed work might be better than anything anyone else could have written.

 

“Jisoo, we can’t put your essay up like this,” Jinyoung said at the judging panel the following day. Jisoo was sitting there with their teacher, Mr. Hong, reading over people’s essays. Jisoo stared at Jinyoung blankly, quietly fuming.

 

“What do you mean?” she demanded. “It’s fine!”

 

“Yeah, but it feels kind of… unpolished,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo’s ears burned. How dare he criticize her work? He was right, of course, it _was_ unpolished but… still. It annoyed her that Jinyoung thought he was in any position to be criticizing _her_ writing.

 

It only made things worse when Mr. Hong agreed with Jinyoung. Jisoo snatched the essay back, and when she got home, she polished it up. She fixed it up so that Jinyoung couldn’t have a word to say about it the next time he read it. When she passed on the edited version to Mr. Hong, he was so impressed, he asked if he could make a copy to keep for his records.

 

When he said that, Jisoo beamed, thinking she must have written something really special if Mr. Hong wanted to keep it. Her spirits fell, however, when she learned that he’d said the same thing to Jinyoung about _his_ essay.

 

She seethed in her seat. He just _wouldn’t_ give up trying to outdo her, would he?

 

By the time they finished up their middle school years and were preparing to move on to high school, Jisoo’s dislike of Jinyoung hand’t disappeared although it had dulled somewhat. She still maintained that he was a show-off who took any opportunity to outdo her in school. But she was still too preoccupied with trying to make friends and fit in that she didn’t have time to even think about him.

 

In their first year of high school, Jisoo got lucky: she somehow caught the attention of Song Mino, the most popular second-year boy in their school.

 

He was kind of a troublemaker, which Jisoo (being a fourteen year old girl) thought was attractive and sexy. He never wore a tie, which was a standard part of their school uniform, and rumor had it that he’d already had so many infractions that the teachers no longer bothered trying to correct him. A rebel, someone who didn’t go along with the crowd, a fiercely independent spirit who couldn’t be tamed. Jisoo fell hard.

 

His shoe locker was next to hers, and he often “accidentally” bumped into her. It was just an excuse to brush against her shoulder, Jisoo told herself. One day, the accidental touches evolved into a “hey, girl,” and she swore she melted every time. Once, he even varied his vocabulary by saying “hey there” instead of “hey, girl.” She was thrilled.

 

And the one day, he actually spoke to her.

 

“You’re on duty this week aren’t you?” he asked. Jisoo felt her heart booming in her chest.

 

“Y-Yeah,” she answered, demurely tucking a stray hair behind her ear. She was in charge of bringing people’s notebooks from the classroom to the teachers’ office and also staying behind to collect people’s tests. Mino was in an entirely different class altogether, so the fact that he knew that about her must have meant something, right?

 

“I heard you’re taking an advanced class with the second years,” he said, smirking. “That’s impressive.”

 

“Oh really?” she said. “Uh, thanks. Yeah, I… I like to… study.”

 

Stupid. He’d think she was a total loser who only studied and never did anything fun. She was in the middle of trying to fix her blunder when Mino said:

 

“You think you can do me a favor?”

 

Jisoo blinked. “Absolutely,” she said.

 

Mino wanted her to help him and a couple of friends pass a test. At first, her heart sped up, thinking that he was asking her to “tutor” him, which of course was a secret code for “please go out with me.” But the more he explained, the more Jisoo realized what he wanted her to do: he wanted her to steal the test. So that he could see the exam questions ahead of time.

 

Her heart started pounding again, but for a different reason this time. Steal a test? She could never.

 

“It’s easy,” Mino said. “No one will even know. When you’re taking the tests up to the office, just swipe the one at the top. It doesn’t even matter, the answers won’t be there. We just wanna get a look at the questions.”

 

Jisoo tried to keep from quivering. He was asking her to steal. To break the rules. When she didn’t speak up for a long time, Mino looked annoyed.

 

“Hey, I thought you were a pretty cool girl,” he said and then shrugged. “I don’t know what to think anymore. You flirt with me all year, but the first time I ask you for something, you can’t deliver? Come on. It’s such a trivial thing, the teachers won’t even care. You could just swipe the test and then… give it to me when you come hang out with me after school.”

 

After school? Was he asking her out?

 

She tried to picture herself doing it. Swiping a test from a stack before delivering them to the office. It was true, there wouldn’t even be any answers on them, it was just a testing sheet. The student usually wrote their responses on a separate paper. And all the tests were the same, the teacher wouldn’t even realize if one went missing.

 

And Song Mino was finally noticing her after months and silently watching him. Jisoo looked up and he was smiling at her. Well… if it really was nothing, she supposed there was no harm in it.

 

So that afternoon, as everyone was returning their tests and responses to the front desk, Jisoo waited until everyone had gone. Then, when the coast was clear, she grabbed the test at the top of the stack, folded it as small as she could and tucked it into her sleeve. Then she walked up and returned the papers to her teacher’s office as if nothing had happened. When she finally walked out of the school, Mino was waiting for her with his friends. As soon as he saw that Jisoo had taken the test, he smiled and invited her to get a late lunch with them.

 

When she got home that night, she didn’t feel right. She felt nervous and unsettled and… and dirty. Stealing the test didn’t sit right with her. She wanted to call Mino and tell him to give the test back to her so she could return it. But she didn’t have his phone number, and she watched it rip the test up when they were done studying it, and they threw it away.

 

A few days later, Jisoo’s crime finally caught up with her.

 

She’d fallen into a kind of routine of meeting Mino outside the school when classes ended. But one day at the shoe lockers, she was intercepted by Jinyoung.

 

“You’re in charge of taking the tests up to the office, right?” he asked. The blood drained from her face. She’d forgotten that Jinyoung was in her class, too. He looked slightly frantic as he questioned her.

 

“No,” Jisoo said, shoving her feet into her shoes and trying to ignore him.

 

“Yes, you are,” he insisted. “I asked the others, they said you’re the one who takes the notebooks and papers up to Mrs. Choi.”

 

“Okay, so what?” Jisoo said, growing more and more nervous with this line of questioning. “What do you want? Just leave me alone, Jinyoung.”

 

But he didn’t. He followed her over to the doorway and blocked her. “Did you take it” he asked. Jisoo tensed again. How did he—?

 

“No!” she said, but then she froze. “I mean… what are you talking about?”

 

Shit.

 

“You _did_ take it, didn’t you?” he said. “Jisoo! Why?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jisoo said, trying to get past him. “Get out of my way!”

 

“You have to tell Mrs. Choi,” he said, his voice desperate. “Jisoo, tell Mrs. Choi!”

 

“Tell her what? That I brought the tests up to her office like she asked? Like I usually do?”

 

“That you cheated,” Jinyoung said, and Jisoo froze, turning an offended expression at him.

 

“I didn’t cheat on anything,” she said coldly. “How dare you accuse me like that?”

 

“Well, if you didn’t cheat, why’d you take the test? Did you know that the one you stole was mine?”

 

She didn’t know. She didn’t check the names or the numbers, she had just done what Mino asked her and took whichever one happened to be at the top. She knew it was wrong, but it was too late now to change what happened. In the corner of her eye, she saw Mino approaching them with his hands in his pocket. He narrowed his eyes at Jinyoung.

 

“What’s going on her?” he asked. Jinyoung, however, ignored him.

 

“Jisoo, this isn’t right,” he said. “Mrs. Choi thinks I stole my own test and gave it to someone. My head’s on the chopping block. I didn’t do it. Tell Mrs. Choi—,”

 

“She doesn’t have to say anything,” Mino said, putting a hand protectively on Jisoo. Funny. She might have thought this was romantic if she wasn’t caught in the throes of her own personal moral dilemma.

 

Jinyoung was right, of course. What she did wasn’t right. It wasn’t honorable, it wasn’t worthy of her. But if she confessed to Mrs. Choi now… who knows what might happen? She could be suspended. She would have to give up Mino’s name and the names of his friends, too. They would hate her. They were popular, they could make her life miserable. She’d be known throughout school as the girl who squealed. All her hard work trying to fit in and be liked would be for nothing. She’d be an outcast again. She’d be unwanted.

 

In middle of her deliberation, Jinyoung reached out and put a hand on her arm.

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Jinyoung said. His voice was kind, even after all of it. “This isn’t you. Just tell Mrs. Choi the truth. I won’t be mad, I promise, but you have to—”

 

Jisoo tugged her arm out of his grip. She felt like a robot doing that. She felt like the inside of her was cold and dead. Mino smirked next to her.

 

“Just leave me alone, Jinyoung,” she said.

 

Jinyoung stood there for a long time, just staring at her, and it felt even worse than that time he called her Kim Peachu in middle school. It felt even worse than all the times he patronizingly tried to tutor her in math, and this time it wasn’t because his words made her feel like dirt. This time it was because she _knew_ she was dirt. A liar and a cheat. A sellout.

 

She watched as Jinyoung swallowed and looked her up and down. He shook his head slowly. Then he took two steps back, turned around and walked away.

 

Mino squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and thank her for not ratting him out. But Jisoo felt numb to his flirtations. When more time she spent with him and his friends, the more she realized that they weren’t the kind of people she wanted to be friends with anyway. The following year, she distanced herself from them completely. Mino grew bored with her and moved on to the next naive, impressionable first year, though he was soon expelled for starting fights.

 

Jinyoung’s attitude toward her, however, had completely changed. In middle school and through their first year of high school, he was constantly getting under her skin. He was always trying to act all buddy-buddy with her and his teasing made her burn up and want to rise up the ranks just to show him who the best student in the class was.

 

But now, he almost completely ignored her.

 

More than once, Jisoo thought of apologizing. But it was too late. He’d already served four weeks of detention when Mrs. Choi accused him of stealing his own test. At this point, apologizing would be beating a dead horse. Plus, anytime she even came near him, he’d pack up his books and go somewhere else.

 

After weeks of this, Jisoo had had enough. If he wanted to be indignant and petty, then fine: she could be indignant and petty, too. Their academic rivalry just got even more intense. Jisoo found herself studying longer and harder, just to beat him. When they were in their final year of high school, their rivalry was so intense, it came down to the two of them for the valedictorian spot. Their GPA’s were exactly the same. They both evened each other out when it came to extracurriculars, too. They’d both been accepted to top notch schools in the same area. In the end, the valedictory committee decided they’d award the title to whichever of them wrote the best valedictory speech.

 

Jisoo had turned and looked at Jinyoung with a smug smile that day in the office. I am going to _smoke_ you, she thought. When it came to writing, she knew she was better.

 

She went home and agonized over her speech, wanting to craft every word, every sentence, every paragraph _perfectly_. It had to be balanced and restrained but emotionally evocative and maybe even a little bit funny.

 

This was it: the final showdown between her and Jinyoung. This time, she _had_ to beat him. No matter what. Kim-fucking-Peachu was going to be the high school-fucking-valedictorian.


	7. Sun and Stars

Jinyoung was in the middle of BIO 470 when he randomly decided to open up his laptop and check on his budget sheet. Since agreeing to take on the volunteer shifts at the convalescent home, Jinyoung had to cut back a few hours at his work study job at the campus infirmary. The discounted rent made up for the loss of money, but he was still steering dangerously close to the top of his budget. He scanned each item, checking to see if there was anything he could cut back on. He considered calling Jackson and tell him he wouldn’t be able to meet for dinner tonight; he wouldn’t be able to fit it into the budget.

 

Around him, his classmates began to pack their things. Jinyoung followed suit, carefully replacing his laptop and notebook into his bag. He was halfway across the quad and considering heading on back to Hillside Residences when he was stopped by someone.

 

It was his ex-girlfriend. Lee Nawon.

 

She was wearing a sunny yellow top, and in a brilliant moment of color association, he thought she looked happy. Which only made him feel even worse. It’d been more than a month since he caught her making out with Mark, and he hated how his heart still skipped a beat seeing her. Just a leftover reaction from their seven-month relationship, he supposed. One day, he’d be able to look at her and feel nothing. 

 

When he looked up and met her eyes, she had an apologetic look on her face. 

 

“Hey,” she said quietly. Jinyoung swallowed.

 

“Hey,” he said, only because he wasn’t sure what else to say. Nawon stood there for the longest time, probably thinking of the best way to say whatever it was she wanted to say. Jinyoung’s mind, meanwhile, romped back seven months and remembered how she had fake a sprained ankle just to go to the infirmary to see him and how she’d worn a blue dress on their first date, all the way up to the moment he walked in and saw her being unfaithful to him. 

 

He half expected Nawon to come out with an apology. But she offered none. Instead, she handed him a book. _Malice_ by Keigo Higashino. He almost scoffed at how appropriate the title was for this moment. 

 

“You let me borrow this a while ago, I forgot I had it,” Nawon said, gently as if the next word out her mouth might break him. Jinyoung, however, tried to look as unaffected as he possibly could. He took the book from her. She probably didn’t even read it. 

 

“So, how are you?” she asked. “We all feel sorry for you, you know.”

 

“I don’t feel like talking,” Jinyoung said, and then ducked around her and started walking away before she tried talking to him again. He really did _not_ want to talk. He did _not_ want to hear her excuses or her explanations, no matter how many times people insisted that it would give him comfort and closure. He wanted to just get away from all of it, pretend it never happened.

 

When he looked back, Nawon wasn’t following him. Instead, he saw her walking in another direction toward the coffee cart where he saw Mark waiting. Unlike Nawon, Mark hadn’t tried reaching out to Jinyoung at all. 

 

Even though he didn’t want to, Jinyoung’s body unconsciously began to slow down. He could take his eyes away from his ex-girlfriend and his ex-roommate.

 

He had tried to keep himself from falling down the rabbit hole of wondering how long Nawon and Mark had been going on behind his back. Wondering when in those seven months he had lost Nawon. Wondering what he could have done differently or if things had been wrong from the very beginning.

 

But then he stopped himself. Not now. He couldn’t think of this now. Not when there were so many other things to worry about. Like that medical school acceptance letter that seemed like it might never come or his budget. Jinyoung turned back and started walking again, but then he immediately rammed into someone and fell forward, pinning the person to the grass.

 

Jisoo grunted in pain the moment her back hit the grass and then again when Jinyoung fell on her, knocking the wind out of her lungs. 

 

“Jisoo?” Jinyoung looked down at her face and, seeing how close they were, their cheeks colored at the same time. He pushed himself off of her and tried to pull Jisoo up, but she insisted on helping herself. 

 

“Is this some kind of Southern Tech welcoming ritual?” Jisoo said, straightening out her dress, which was the color of the night sky. “Do you tackle all your visitors?”

 

“I didn’t see you,” Jinyoung said apologetically. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Jisoo said, brushing grass off her skirt. There were grass stains on the back of her leg. The dandelion fuzz that got stuck on the crown of her head looked like stars against the black of her hair. What a surprise it was to see Jisoo here.

 

“What do you want?” he asked, finding the usual curt tone he used when speaking to her. Jisoo looked up.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“I said what do you want?”

 

She scoffed and crossed her arms.

 

“How do you even know I’m here to see you?” she said stubbornly. “Maybe I’m here to… talk to a friend, or how do you know I don’t have a hot Southern Tech boyfriend that I’m visiting?”

 

Jinyoung raised an eyebrow and paused for a moment. “Do you?” he asked. Jisoo bit the inside of her cheek.

 

“No,” she said, and Jinyoung scoffed. 

 

“Okay, well, last I checked, it’s not football season, so I’m guessing you’re not here to steal our mascot,” he said. “Did you need something from me?”

 

“No,” Jisoo said, quieter that time. Jinyoung was confused and getting a little impatient.

 

“Then what are you doing here?” 

 

Jisoo clenched her first and opened and closed her mouth several times, trying to find the best way to broach her topic. This was a very serious situation, and raising it the wrong way might make the whole thing collapse. Jinyoung was still waiting for her to speak. She cleared her throat:

 

“Did I tell you that I got a job interview last week?” she said.

 

Jinyoung didn’t move and didn’t speak, just stared at her. 

 

“You came to tell me you got a job interview?” he said. “Okay. Congratulations. I hope you had a nice trip coming over here, since you kind of wasted it.”

 

He dodged her and started to walk away. Unlike Nawon, however, Jisoo followed him.

 

“It’s at this company,” Jisoo said. “A magazine, well actually it’s more like a journal. It’s called Embrace.”

 

He recognized the title: “You mean that journal you read in high school?”

 

Jisoo was surprised, and kind of impressed. “You know it? You read it, then?”

 

“No, I just remembered it. You got a job there? As what?” As much as Jinyoung tried to sound like he wasn’t interested, he was a little bit curious. Jisoo kept up with his pace, walking backwards so she could face him as she spoke. 

 

“Editorial Intern,” Jisoo answered. “I’d basically be preparing materials for publication and assisting the Associate Managing Editor, her name is Sandara Park, and maybe even get to write some features, and there’s a possibility for advancement after one year.”

 

Jinyoung stopped walking for a minute and held Jisoo’s gaze.

 

“You’re a writer, then,” he said. Jisoo was caught a bit off guard by his tone. He almost sounded… happy? It confused her, so she chose to ignore it.

 

“Almost,” she said, holding up one finger. “I went in and interviewed, and the managing editor, her name is Julie Kiyoko, she really liked me. She even asked me to stay afterward and gave me some advice.”

 

She was speaking very animatedly about her job interview, and Jinyoung remembered that she used to go off on tangents in middle schools, making up stories about pirates and princess and spies and talking animals. 

 

“So did you get the job?” he asked. Jisoo’s smile flattened into a frown.

 

“No. Not exactly,” she said. “She said that she’d otherwise hire me because she thinks I have all of the major qualifications and a really strong writing background, even though I—”

 

“Can we skip to the part where you make your point?” Jinyoung said, starting to walk again. Jisoo resumed her backwards skip-trot and Jinyoung had to grab her arm to stop her from running into a guy handing out fliers. 

 

“She said she couldn’t hire me because of my lack of experience,” Jisoo said, tugging her arm away from him.

 

“I still don’t see why you’re telling me this,” Jinyoung said.

 

“Because… I think you could help me.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “I’m not getting you a job,” he said. “I just started a new work study position, I’m doing a volunteer gig at a convalescent home, and I’m barely getting by as it is.”

 

“Oh, well, then maybe this’ll help you, too!” Jisoo said in a cheerful way that puzzled him. “Because I would pay you for your time!”

 

“Pay me? You’re giving _me_ a job?” Jinyoung said, stopping in his tracks. Jisoo shrugged.

 

“Sort of,” she said gently. Jinyoung blinked at her, honestly not knowing what in world was going on.

 

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. Jisoo pushed her shoulders back and straightened out her posture. She took a deep breath.

 

“I have a… business proposition for you,” she said, evenly and calmly, but Jinyoung still felt uneasy.

 

“As you already know, Embrace is a literary journal that specializes in publishing short stories and features in the romance genre,” Jisoo said in her business-major-presentation voice. “They’re also famous for scouting and championing new voices and propelling them on to prosperous writing careers and pioneering newcomer talents. Now, Julie Kiyoko won’t hire me because even though I  have great writing skills, a pleasant personality, and am exceptionally qualified—

 

“Modest, too,” Jinyoung said with a smirk. Jisoo ignored his sarcasm.

 

“—She says I need go out and gain some meaningful experience,” she paused there for dramatic effect, but ended up making an awkward silence. Jisoo swallowed, preparing to deliver the punchline: 

 

“As in, like… romantic experience.”

 

Jinyoung stared at her for the longest time. He played her words back in his head, connecting the dots until he finally arrived at what she was trying to do. Then he realized:

 

“You’re asking me out.”

 

Jisoo panicked.

 

“No! Not _really_ ,” she said. She cleared her throat. 

 

“Julie Kiyoko told me to go out and find someone to date and then reapply when I’ve found love. Now, the other day at lunch, Lisa thought we were on a date, right? When she said that, it made me realize that I don’t _actually_ have to date someone, I just have to make Julie Kiyoko _think_ I am. So I just need to find someone and make Julie Kiyoko _think_ that person is my boyfriend.”

 

This was getting to be too much. She wasn’t serious, was she? Jinyoung could scarcely contain his amusement now. This whole thing was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. But when he looked down at her determined expression, he could tell that she was a hundred percent serious.

 

“Oh, I see,” he said, grinning a little. “You mean like a pretend boyfriend.”

 

Jisoo nodded. “Exactly!”

 

Jinyoung stared at her for the longest time before he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard, his eyes scrunched up and watered, and he had to bend over and hold on to his abdomen. Then, he stepped aside and began to walk past her, still laughing.

 

Jisoo was livid.

 

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” she said, shouting after him. Jinyoung turned to face her again.

 

“I knew you were crazy before,” he said, still unable to stop laughing. “But now I see that you’re actually, completely insane.”

 

Jisoo was offended. She stomped after him with a furious frown on her face.

 

“I’m _not_ insane!” Jisoo said. “Admit it, this is actually kind of a genius plan! I’ve done my research. Do you have any idea how much planning goes into a con like this? Tons! I have a renewed sense of respect for scammers and you should, too! I would have to an obscene amount of planning to make this seem legitimate.”

 

“I wonder,” Jinyoung said, looking pensively into the distance. “What did you think were the chances of me saying yes?”

 

Jisoo scoffed. 

 

“It wouldn’t be like _real_ dating, Jinyoung,” she said. “We don’t even have to go on dates or even spend that much time together. I’d just need you to go with me to official company events and stuff, and I’d compensate you!”

 

“Compensate me?” Jinyoung said. This was getting even better. “For what? For the embarrassment of being caught dating you?”

 

He regretted saying it almost immediately after it came out of his mouth, but it was too late. Jisoo had already been insulted. She heaved in a deep breath to keep herself from exploding at him. If she did that, he would definitely say no.

 

“Hey, there’s no need to be hurtful here,” she said as calmly as she could. “I’m presenting this to you as a business deal. I’ll even draw up a contract for you if it’ll make you feel better.”

 

“This is actually kind of sad,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him. He had to admit she looked kind of… cute when she was angry.

 

“Excuse me?” she said. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Sad that you need to resort to contracts and deals to get someone to want to be your boyfriend. You’ve gotta admit that’s kind of pathetic.”

 

“You know what? Just forget it,” Jisoo said. “You’re right, this is crazy, and you’re impossible. Literally the worst. I don’t know what I was thinking, coming to you with my problems. I knew I shouldn’t have expected you to understand and… and I hate you!”

 

“I know that already.”

 

“Well, I do!” Jisoo said, nodding. “With all the fury of a thousand burning stars.”

 

“You mean ‘suns,’ right?”

 

“The sun _is_ a star,” Jisoo said, and she made a point of slamming her shoulder into his as she walked away, which turned out to be a bad idea since she ended up hurting her own shoulder more than his. But she pretended it didn’t hurt.

 

Before Jinyoung could even respond, she’d already started stomping off in the opposite direction. He watched her walk away with even more amusement. She couldn’t have been serious. Could she? What the hell just happened?

 

“Good luck with the job search,” he called out to her as her form retreated and disappeared around the bend in the walkway. Jinyoung scoffed again, still clueless as to what just happened. He was about to turned around and be on his merry way when he noticed a man jogging toward him. He recognized Professor Edward Park from a Molecular Biology course he took two years ago. Evidently, today was the day to run into people.

 

“Professor Park,” Jinyoung said, greeting the man as he got closer. He was a short, balding man past middle age who looked downright jolly all the time. Jinyoung had once asked him for a letter of recommendation to apply for a student training program at the local hospital. He slowed to catch his breath.

 

“Jinyoung! How are you?” the professor asked.

 

“Doing good, sir. Yourself?” Jinyoung answered. Professor Park dabbed at his bald spot with a handkerchief. 

 

“I’m fine, thank you,” Professor Park said. “I just stopped you because it looks like you haven’t emailed my assistant with your RSVP yet.”

 

For a minute Jinyoung was confused about what he meant, but Professor Park reminded him a moment later: “You’re still coming to the Scholars’ Gala, aren’t you?” he asked.

 

Truth be told, Jinyoung had forgotten all about it. He saw the invitation in his inbox a while ago, but in all the craziness that was the end of his hospital training program, the death of his old teacher, his girlfriend’s unfaithfulness, the new house situation, and now Jisoo’s ridiculous proposal, the RSVP had taken a backseat.

 

“Oh. Well, actually…” Jinyoung began but the professor cut him off.

 

“I know it’s kind of a tired old affair and you young people would much rather being doing something else,” Professor Park said. “But it’s your last year, and you haven’t been to any of the others. It’s actually quite an experience.”

 

The Scholars’ Gala was held in the ballroom of the L’hotel Stella every year, and it was meant to be a last hurrah type of deal for the Biology’s department’s graduating seniors, though other students were allowed to come as well. Jinyoung had never been because he wasn’t one for those types of events.

 

“I’m sure it is, sir,” Jinyoung said. Professor Park clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder.

 

“You know you’re one of the brightest students in the department,” Professor Park said, leaning in. “Without giving away too much, there will be a ceremony honoring a few select, deserving students and if your name is called, you really ought to be there.”

 

Jinyoung grinned but modestly denied thinking that he was deserving of any award. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

 

Professor Park’s face suddenly became concerned.

 

“You really should RSVP, Jinyoung,” he said gently, knowingly. Jinyoung was a little confused by it.

 

“Even if you don’t have a date, you should do it,” Professor Park said. “I know you must be feeling a lot of pressure, with med schools sending out their decisions and you’ve just broken off with Lee Nawon.”

 

Jinyoung’s eyes widened and he froze. “How did you know that, sir?” Jinyoung asked.

 

“Oh, dear,” Professor Park said. “Was I not supposed to know? I’m so sorry, I thought it was common knowledge by now. The whole department is abuzz with the news. We were all a bit heartbroken on your behalf. You two were quite the power couple. We all worry about you, you know?”

 

Jinyoung couldn’t feel more embarrassed. Did the _entire_ biology department really know about what happened between him and Nawon? Southern Tech was a small university for sure, but he didn’t know it was _that_ small. His stomach churned, thinking about how all his classmates had been giving him weird looks lately. Could it be that they knew? Could it be that they were worried about him?

 

He thought about what Nawon had said to him earlier: we all feel sorry for you. 

 

“Worry about me?” Jinyoung said, furrowing his brows. But Professor Park didn’t elaborate. He patted his head with the handkerchief again and smiled.

 

“Anyway. Whatever you decide!” Professor Park said. “It’s perfectly okay to come to the gala without a date. RSVP soon and let me my assistant know if you have any food restrictions.”

 

“Of course,” Jinyoung said. Professor Park trotted off to his next class while Jinyoung stood for a long minute there in the middle of the quad. They pitied him. Nawon, Mark, Professor Park, his classmates, they actually _pitied_ him. His ex-girlfriend actually felt _sorry_ for him. Somehow, that was even worse than having her hate him. 

 

When he finally reached his room at Hillside Residences, he burned with new determination. He sat on his bed, opened up his laptop, and dug through his inbox until he found the invitation. He followed a link to a site that asked him how many guests he wanted to RSVP. He checked the box for +1 guest and sent in his response.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today! I've been on the go for over 18 hours from yesterday, but my boss said I could just come into work tomorrow. I'm using today to get ahead in my writing. I hope you guys have enjoyed the story so far, and thank you so much for the lovely comments! Keep them coming, I love interacting with readers! I'll update soon!


	8. Terms and Conditions

Jackson was trying to convince him to go… somewhere. Jinyoung wasn’t really paying attention.

 

He’d been to an 8-week student training program at the local hospital last year, but Mrs. Wang wasn’t an idiot and knew that an 8-week training program wasn’t the same as a medical degree. So Jinyoung’s main duties at Hillside Residences were taking care of the residents’ non-medical needs. This included things like helping old Mrs. Kang get down the stairs and assuring belligerently anxious Mr. Jung that the Japanese were no longer out patrolling the streets, and that they hadn’t for decades now. Jackson followed Jinyoung as he made the rounds, still pressing his case.

 

“Come on,” Jackson said. “It’s been over a month, dude. You need to get back out there. Plus, if you don’t do this for me, it could ruin the one good things that’s happened to me in a really long time!”

 

Jinyoung bent over to pick up a piece of trash on the ground. Then he turned to face his friend.

 

“Sorry, what were you talking about, again?” Jinyoung said. Jackson looked unamused.

 

“You remember that girl I told you I was talking to?” Jackson said.

 

“I… vaguely remember it,” Jinyoung said. “Which one? The one with highlights? And she looks like a cat?”

 

“That very one,” Jackson said, clapping Jinyoung on the chest. “She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s hot, she is literally _the_ girl of my dreams. And we’re kind of dating now.”

 

“I’m happy for you,” Jinyoung said, walking into a kitchen seeing as this conversation was taking a turn that he’d rather the residents and other caregivers didn’t hear about. Jackson followed, and Jinyoung noticed that his friend was dressed nicer than usual.

 

“Are you two going out _tonight_?” Jinyoung said, gesturing to Jackson’s obviously new jacket and matching pants. Jackson laughed.

 

“Actually, we are,” Jackson said. “There’s a carnival that opened up for the weekend downtown, I’m meeting her there.”

 

“So, what does that have to do with me?” Jinyoung asked. “You want my permission or something?”

 

Jackson laughed but then his face turned solemn quickly. Jinyoung wondered what it was he had to say.

 

“Well, the thing is,” Jackson said, clearing his throat. “My girl’s got a friend—,”

 

“Stop right there,” Jinyoung said. “I already know where this is going. The answer’s no.”

 

Jinyoung skirted around Jackson and tossed the stray piece of trash into the bin. Then he grabbed a broom and started to sweep the floor. Jackson scoffed, grabbing the broom from him.

 

“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Jackson said. Jinyoung narrowed his eyes at him.

 

“You were going to ask me to come with you on a double date,” Jinyoung said. “And I don’t want to.”

 

“But why?” Jackson said, still hounding him.

 

“I’m working,” Jinyoung said.

 

“Doing what? Changing bed pans and looking out for Japanese soldiers?” Jackson said. “You know my mom would let you have the night out tonight if I asked her.”

 

“Don’t ask her,” Jinyoung said, giving Jackson a stern look. “We had an agreement, 15% of my rent for three shifts a week. You know I always stand by my commitments.”

 

Jinyoung exited through the backdoor and headed for the staircase leading up to the rooms. Jackson ran ahead of him, though, and blocked his way. He had an expression of mock hurt on his face.

 

“What about our friendship, then, huh?” Jackson said. “What about _that_ commitment?”

 

“Why don’t you ask Youngjae to do it?” Jinyoung suggested, turning around and heading back to the kitchen. Jackson chased after him.

 

“Youngjae’s got a girlfriend already,” Jackson said. “You’re the next best thing. Come on, you haven’t even _met_ my girlfriend, yet, I thought this would be a great way for all of us to get to know one another. And you may even end up liking her friend. She could help you get over Nawon!”

 

Jinyoung rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.”

 

“Jinyoung, I am seriously worried about you,” Jackson said. Jinyoung paused and stared at him.

 

“I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

 

“Well, maybe it’s because you go straight home from class every single day and you only come out for meals and you sleep with a crochet octopus every night.”

 

“I don’t sleep with that octopus,” Jinyoung said, looking offended. “That octopus hasn’t left my desk since I got here. You know I don’t sleep with that octopus. Did someone tell you I sleep with that octopus?”

 

“No, of course not,” Jackson said sarcastically. “You’re just getting awful defensive about it because you just use it for decoration, right?”

 

“I’m still not going with you.”

 

“Yes, you are. It’s been long enough, Jinyoung,” Jackson stepped in front of his friend and blocked Jinyoung from leaving the room. He gave Jackson a challenging stare, one that Jackson just threw right back at him.

 

“You keep saying you’re over her, but the way you’re acting isn’t exactly convincing me,” Jackson said. “You say you’re over her, but you don’t leave your place for hours on end and you avoid people and horde stuff. All I’m asking for is _one_ evening. After that, you can go back to moping. Hell, you could mope tonight, too, but just do it while you’re on this double date with me.”

 

Jinyoung sighed and then leaned back against the kitchen island. He crossed his arms, still giving Jackson a stern, challenging look. He wanted to deny everything Jackson said, but his friend was much more stubborn than Jinyoung was. He knew that if he put up a fight, Jackson would outlast him. But the stern look on Jackson’s face faded away and was replaced with a gentler expression.

 

“I’m telling you, this girl…” Jackson said, his eyes glossing over as he thought about his girlfriend.

 

“I mean, it’s kind of too early to tell, but I just got a good feeling, you know?” Jackson said. “This is literally the first, _ever_ , thing she’s asked me for. Well, actually, her friend asked her to ask me for this favor, and you know how girls are with their friends’ boyfriends. This could be like a test, you know? If I don’t pull through, what is she gonna think?”

 

Jinyoung _really_ did not want to go. But Jackson’s little speech about his new girlfriend was the happiest he’d seen his friend in a long time. He’d never had a girl cheat on him, but he’d been unlucky in the dating department all the same. And he was right, girls were protective of each other. If Jackson didn’t win the approval of his girlfriend’s friend group, it would be a hard walk through life for him.

 

Jinyoung supposed one evening wouldn’t hurt. And besides, if it turned out well, he may not have to accept Jisoo’s proposal after all; he could just ask _this_ girl to the gala.

 

“ _One_ evening.”

 

Jackson fist pumped the air and then clapped Jinyoung hard against the chest again, momentarily knocking the air out of his lungs.

 

“Yes! You’re the man!” Jackson shouted. “Whoo! Park Jinyoung, back in the game! Thank you, man. I promise, it’ll be painless. I won’t even be mad if you decide to ditch her in the middle of it. I mean, I’ll be a little mad, but you’re not the type so—”

 

“Right, yeah, sure,” Jinyoung said, rubbing the spot where Jackson had hit his chest. “So what time are we meeting them?”

 

“In like an hour,” Jackson said, checking his watch. He looked Jinyoung up and down and saw that his friend was still wearing an apron. “So you better get dressed.”

 

“Right,” Jinyoung said. He was about to turn and go up to his room to change when he suddenly realized, he’d never asked Jackson a particular question: “So… who is your new girlfriend, anyway?”

 

 

 

 

 

“Jennie!” Jackson shouted over the noise of the carnival. “Baby, over here!”

 

He waved his arms over his head trying to get her attention. Jinyoung squinted a little, trying to see over people’s heads at the girl who had won his friend’s heart over. The girl with the highlights who looked a little like a cat. It was a warm evening, and the carnival grounds were swarming with people. Lights and sounds and smells abounded. Through the commotion, however, Jinyoung was able to spot a pretty girl with long, wavy brown hair. Her almond-shaped eyes had a certain feline quality, and her smile was more of a smirk. There was another girl next to her.

 

Jennie spotted Jackson right away. She tugged on Jisoo’s arm and pointed to him.

 

“Oh! That’s him, look over there, it’s my new boyfriend!” Jennie said. Jisoo looked up and saw the boy waving his arms around, standing next to another boy who barely moved at all.

 

“Isn’t he cute?” Jennie said, giggling. “Jackson!”

 

Jennie pulls Jisoo along as she navigates the crowd, closing in on where Jackson is standing, waiting for her with his friend. When they find each other, Jennie beams at her boyfriend.

 

“Hey!” she says brightly. “We almost couldn’t find this place. You’d think it’d be obvious with all the lights and the giant ferris wheel, but Jisoo made us get off at the wrong stop.”

 

Jackson laughed, and so did Jennie, but Jinyoung and Jisoo could only stare at each other with white, blank stares.

 

“That’s tough,” Jackson said. “You should have called me, we could have gone to get you two. Good thing you got here alright, though. Did you have any trouble?”

 

Jackson and Jennie flirted a bit more before they realized that their neither of their friends had said a word. Jennie tugged on Jisoo’s arm, bringing her closer.

 

“This is my friend—”

 

“Jisoo?” Jinyoung said, finally. Both Jennie and Jackson looked startled at him.

 

“You two know each other?” Jackson asked.

 

“Jinyoung?” Jisoo said. Jennie and Jackson exchanged surprised looks with each other.

 

“Oh, so you guys have met?” Jennie asked.

 

“In a manner of speaking,” said Jisoo, eyes wide and looking slightly panicked. Jackson started laughing gently.

 

“Wow. This is perfect!” he said. “I guess we can just bypass the awkward introduction stage, then, and skip right to making out!”

 

Jinyoung turned to Jackson with a slightly shocked expression, and Jackson pounded him on the chest again. “I’m kidding,” Jackson said. “Loosen up, we’re on date with two gorgeous girls. At least act like you’re having a good time.”

 

“Have either of you two been here before?” Jennie said, jumping in and trying to chase away the sudden awkwardness. Jackson smiled at her. He reached out to take her hand and Jennie stepped closer to him, leaving Jisoo alone to face Jinyoung.

 

“Nope, never,” Jackson said. “So, what do you girls wanna do first? Hey, wanna see me hit the bell on the high striker? I can do it, you know?”

 

Jennie leaned into his arm and laughed. “You are so full of yourself.”

 

“You look so cute when you’re teasing me.”

 

Then, almost as if their friends had turned invisible, Jennie and Jackson turned and walked off into the carnival, hand-in-hand, giggling like a pair of newborn, lovestruck puppies. Jinyoung was left alone with Jisoo. He turned to her and sighed, not knowing what to do next. He wasn’t expecting this. He wasn’t expecting to see Jisoo. A few days had passed since she confronted him at his school about the whole fake boyfriend scheme.

 

She was wearing an army jacket over a striped shirt, plain blue jeans and black combat boots. A sharp contrast to Jennie’s powder blue date night outfit. Jinyoung was also wearing a comparatively plain outfit compared to Jackson. Between the four of them, it was easy to tell which two were actually dating.

 

“This is awkward,” Jisoo said.

 

“Yeah,” Jinyoung answered. They stood there, quiet, for a long time.

 

“So…” Jinyoung said, braving the silence. “You asked Jennie to set you up with her boyfriend’s friend?”

 

“I didn’t know it was going to be you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Jisoo said. She started walking with her hands in her pockets. Jinyoung fell into step beside her, trying to keep Jennie and Jackson in their sights.

 

“I guess that means you’re still looking for a fake boyfriend, then, huh?” Jinyoung asked. “Was your plan to spring your business proposition on Jennie’s boyfriend’s poor unsuspecting friend tonight?”

 

In fact, that had been exactly her plan, but _he_ had ruined that by being the one to show up tonight. But Jisoo wasn’t about to admit that to him.

 

“You can leave if you want,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung was taken aback.

 

“What?”

 

“I said, you can just leave if you want,” Jisoo said. “I won’t care.”

 

He wanted to, actually. He didn’t even want to come in the first place. But Jinyoung always prided himself in being the kind of person who does what he says he’s going to do, and he told Jackson he would try his best to be a good date tonight, and he meant it.

 

“I don’t care if you don’t care,” he said cryptically.

 

Jisoo cast him a puzzled look.

 

“That _literally_ made no sense,” she said.

 

They kept on walking through the carnival. Thick crowds of people meant that they bumped into people all the time, and occasionally knocked shoulders, but Jisoo was determined not to show any kind of reaction. They’d lost track of Jennie and Jackson after several minutes of aimless wandering. The last time Jisoo saw her, Jennie was standing by the high striker and Jackson had discarded his jacket to show off his muscles.

 

She was glad that Jennie was having a good time, but Jisoo had been looking forward to enjoying herself, too. It had been a while since she had been on a date and she loved fairs and carnivals. Thick crowds of happy people and a large array of sounds and smells provided a great scope for creativity.

 

But she wasn’t planning to run into Jinyoung here. If she could get him to leave, maybe she could at least sit on a bench and people-watch until Jennie was ready to go home.

 

“I’m sorry to disappoint you if you were actually looking forward to having a good time tonight,” Jinyoung said, as if he had read her mind.

 

“But we both know that the more time we spend together, the more likely it is we’ll fight. Jackson really likes Jennie, and I don’t wanna ruin the evening by making this about me and you.”

 

Jisoo was about to punch back with a witty reply, but she was surprised to find herself… touched by his concern for his friend. Jinyoung was staring ahead, dodging small children who were running wild with candy apples, his profile illuminated by the strands of light bulbs overhead.

 

“Jennie really likes Jackson, too,” Jisoo said diplomatically. “She wouldn’t stop talking about him the entire ride over. Yesterday, she came home late and then gushed to me the rest of the night. I… I did ask her for the favor, but mostly I was curious about him.”

 

“Curious about Jackson?” Jinyoung asked.

 

“Yeah,” Jisoo said. “I just wanted to see if the sun really does shine out his ass. The way she talks about, you’d think so.”

 

Jinyoung actually laughed.

 

“How long have the two of you been friends?” he asked.

 

“Me and Jennie?” she asked. “We met at freshman orientation four years ago. Most people are surprised to find out that we’re best friends.”

 

“Why?”

 

Jisoo bristled. She loved Jennie, no doubt. She was kind-hearted and fiercely loyal and Jisoo trusted her with everything she had. But Jisoo sometimes could help but feel like her own faults became more pronounced when they were together. She sometimes wished they were the pair of friends that people mistook for sisters because of how similar they were, but the truth was, they couldn’t be more alike.

 

Jennie was cool and chic. She was suave and confident and always knew exactly what to say. She was always two weeks ahead of every fashion trend and knew exactly what to say to get boys to buy her drinks. Jisoo wasn’t jealous, though. She wasn’t really even that upset, it’s just that her self-esteem tended to fluctuate, especially when she couldn’t meet her own expectations of herself.

 

“You’ve seen her,” Jisoo said, trying to waive the question away. “She’s… athletic and looks like a model and knows how to flirt and has been to Europe and… she eats kale.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “And, let me guess: you _don’t_ eat kale? Wow. You’re right. A kale-eater and non-kale-eaters, your friendship is doomed.”

 

Jisoo scoffed to keep herself from laughing. “Anyway, like I said, you don’t have to stay if you don’t to.”

 

Jinyoung stuffed his hands into his pockets and slowed to a stop. Jisoo followed suit.

 

“Actually… I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said. Jisoo crinkled her brows at him.

 

“Why?”

 

Jinyoung let out a slow breath, chose his words carefully:

 

“If I said yes to your business proposal, how would that work?”

 

Jisoo was surprised. She examined his face to make sure he wasn’t messing with her. When she found no trace of jest in his expression, she took a deep breath and started to explain:

 

“Well, first of all, you’d have to come in and meet Julie Kiyoko,” Jisoo said. “So that she knows you’re a real person. I’d have to set up a fake online profile or something and post pictures as evidence of shared history. There’ll be company events, you’d have to come with me. Other than that, we won’t have to spend another minute together.”

 

“And how much would you pay me?” Jinyoung said.

 

“That depends on how much they’ll pay me, and how well you do,” she said. She held his gaze for a long time, giving him a stern look.

 

“Are you actually… saying yes to the deal?” she said, trying not to get her hopes up. Jinyoung bit the inside of his cheek, examining his options.

 

“Almost,” he said. “But first, I have some conditions, too.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. “No. You don’t get to make conditions.”

 

“Then count me out. Good night,” Jinyoung turned and walked away. Jisoo’s mouth fell ajar. She marched toward him, determined.

 

“Wait. Jinyoung!” she said, dodging people and screaming children to get to him. When she reached him, she grabbed the back of his shirt to slow him down and then stood in front of him. Jinyoung crossed his arms and looked at her expectantly. What a drag, she thought.

 

“Fine,” Jisoo said, huffing her breath. “Name your terms.” Jinyoung smirked.

 

“I need you to return the favor,” he said. “I need you to come to an event with me.”

 

Jisoo was surprised. “What kind of event?”

 

“The bio department holds the Scholars’ Gala every year honoring the graduates,” Jinyoung explained, taking her arm and leading her away from a crowd of hooting teenagers so they could talk. Jisoo tugged her arm out of his hand again.

 

“It’s a formal event, so you’ll need something to wear,” he said. “It’s in two weeks. In the evening, starts around 7. Be my date.”

 

Jisoo looked amused at him. “A quid pro quo,” she said. Jinyoung stood up straighter.

 

“Seems fair, doesn’t it?”

 

In spite of the fact that Jisoo had hated Jinyoung for the better part of ten years, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking _oh god, a boy is asking me out_ , and she hated how pathetic and girly the voice in her head sounded. She forced herself to remember that this was just a negotiation of a business deal, nothing more. She crossed her arms.

 

“Alright, then, fine,” she said, trying to sound a good deal more reluctant than she was. “I’ll go. Do we have a deal?”

 

Jinyoung held himself back from saying yes just yet. He looked Jisoo up and down. Despite all the things she had said earlier about being vastly different from Jennie, Jisoo wasn’t ugly. Not by a long shot. Maybe she didn’t look like a voluptuous Victoria’s Secret bombshell, but her features were pleasing, heart-warming almost. Her eyes were shaped like half moons and they shined wide with wonder. And even though she could be overbearing and stubborn and over dramatic and petty and generally crazy, she more than made up for it with heart and fighting spirit. Jinyoung was sure she could have any man she wanted.

 

“Just out of curiosity,” Jinyoung said, “Why me? I thought you said you hated me with the ‘fury of a thousand burning stars.’”

 

“I still do. So?” Jisoo said. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Then why me?” he asked. “Why not just find some other guy that you like more, ask _him_ out on a real date? Why do you need me? Do boys not like you?”

 

“Boys like me just fine, thank you very much,” she snapped. Jinyoung smirked.

 

“So then why the fake date scheme?”

 

It was a question Jisoo had asked herself before. Why didn’t she just settle for one of the boys she’d messaged online? She didn’t she just work up some courage and ask Jaebum out?

 

“Because…” she said, bristling. “I believe in fate.”

 

Jinyoung blinked. “That’s not an answer.”

 

“I wasn’t finished!” she snapped. She took a deep breath.

 

“I _know_ that somewhere out there is the right man for me,” she said. “And I’ll meet him someday, when fate decides that the time is right. But for now, I can’t force fate to show its hand, I have to be patient. But this isn’t the way I want my own love story to unfold. It’s embarrassing and dishonest and crazy, and… to put things indelicately, I’d rather do this with someone I have no intention of actually falling in love with.”

 

Jinyoung looked into her eyes and he knew that she meant it. And he didn’t doubt that she’d get her way. When Kim Jisoo set her mind on something, no one could stop her. He’d learned that in high school.

 

“And that means me, huh?” he said.

 

“One more thing,” said Jisoo.

 

“What?”

 

“Our little high school rivalry,” she said, almost as if this time, she had read _his_ mind.

 

“What about it?”

 

“That has to be kept out,” she said. Of course, she had considered the fact that she and Jinyoung didn’t like each other when she was coming up with her plan. It might have been better if she’d picked a boy she had a better relationship with. But Jisoo didn’t have many (or any) guy friends, and she figured it would be easier to fool Julie Kiyoko into believing she’d found love so soon after the interview if she could convince Julie that her boyfriend was someone from her childhood.

 

“I’m not saying we have to be friends or anything,” Jisoo said. “But if we’re going to make this work, if we’re going to be business partners, all that baggage can’t be there. I am totally fine setting aside our unresolved differences just this once. That’s not a problem for me. But I have to know that this won’t be a problem for you, either.”

 

Of course it wouldn’t be a problem, Jinyoung thought. Unlike Jisoo, for whom the events of high school were as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday, Jinyoung had actually done some growing up in the four years they spent apart. There were things that happened back then for which he still hadn’t forgiven her, but he was mature enough to leave the past in the past for now.

 

“Not at all,” he said. Jisoo gave an assured nod.

 

“Good,” she said. “Do we have a deal then?”

 

“I’m all yours.”


	9. Unresolved Differences

The year Jinyoung started middle school was also the first year that he hadn’t gone on a camping trip before the start of the school year, which was his and his father’s annual tradition. 

 

His mother had offered to drive him up the mountain to his and his dad’s usual spot, a clearing between Starry Meadow and the waterfall, but Jinyoung wasn’t in the mood, and it didn’t feel right. His father, the town’s fire chief, had been dead a little over a year by the time Jinyoung was twelve, and somehow going back there without him felt wrong.

 

Most of the kids in his class were children that he had been going to school with for years, and ever since his father died, none of them really knew how to talk to him. Sitting down at his desk in the middle of the classroom, he supposed he’d have to endure another school year that would pass by in a hazy blur. But then the teacher clapped his hands together.

 

“We have a transfer student today, boys and girls!” said Mr. Hong, the homeroom teacher. He turned to the door and in walked the prettiest girl Jinyoung had ever seen.

 

She had short, flat hair and a round face, but it was her eyes that commanded his attention. Her bright, wondrous eyes and her smile. She wore a daisy chain around the crown of her head, and Jinyoung thought she looked like a fairy. His heart started pounding from the get-go. Who was she?

 

“Hello, I’m Kim Jisoo.” As she introduced herself, Jinyoung started to feel a strange sensation, as if he’d met Kim Jisoo before. He racked his brain for an answer as she spoke some more about things she liked, like books and reading. Just as she was about to answer one of the teacher’s questions, he suddenly realized why she looked familiar.

 

“Wait! Aren’t you that peach girl?” Jinyoung hadn’t realized at first that he said that aloud. The other kids turned and looked at him. Kim Jisoo’s face went pale. Was it not her? No, it must be.

 

On the way over to the mountain camp site where he and his family spent many summers, Jinyoung’s dad had once pulled into a roadside parking lot of a fruit stand, where a man was selling peaches with a little girl. Their truck had popped a tired, and they were looking for a little help. While his father worried over the tires and his mother browsed the stands, Jinyoung had used the time to wander around the lot, and he noticed the girl, who must have been his age. He also noticed the older boys who were hanging around. They were calling her something, a nickname of sorts.

 

“Kim Peachu!” he said, hoping that if he used her friendly nickname, she might warm up to him. Instead, the children all laughed, and Jisoo looked appalled. Jinyoung was confused.

 

Mr. Hong directed her to take the desk right in front of his, and Jinyoung couldn’t believe his luck. The pretty new girl, sitting by him every single day for the rest of the school year. Things were starting to look up. He was determined to be friends with her. There was a slim chance she’d remember their run-in at the fruit stand, but he was sure that his prior knowledge about her life as a farmer’s daughter would win him some friendship points. During the lesson, he leaned forward in his desk and tried to talk to her.

 

“Hey!” he whispered. “You live on the peach farm, right?”

 

She didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell if his whispering was too soft or if she was just trying not to get in trouble with the teacher. He scooted even closer.

 

“Is the farmer your dad?” he asked. “I’ve been there once! My mom bought two dozen peaches, but half of them went bad and we never got to eat them. But they were good!”

 

“Stop talking to me!” she twisted around in her seat and shouted so forcefully that Jinyoung nearly fell back in his chair. Everyone was staring at them, including Mr. Hong, who calmed the room and snapped at Jinyoung and Jisoo for talking during class. Jinyoung saw Jisoo’s face color with embarrassment, and he was sorry he’d gotten her in trouble. 

 

In the weeks that followed, Jinyoung continued trying to be Jisoo’s friend. She must have been extremely shy, because she rebuffed almost all of his attempts, even his attempts to apologize for the first day. Somehow, using her nickname didn’t seem to win him any of her favor. In fact, most days she downright ignored him.

 

He decided to let up his attention for a bit and let her settle into the school’s society herself. Sitting behind her, he noticed that she was a hard worker, always furiously taking notes in class or flipping through her books, reading and re-reading each lesson, especially in math. Once, while leaning forward, he noticed that she had neat handwriting, too. But he also noticed that the solution of one of her problems was wrong.

 

“You have to move the decimal to the right,” he whispered, and he saw her tense up again. “It’s multiplying by tens.”

 

Even as a little boy, Jinyoung had a great respect for rules. He abhorred the idea of cheating,  but he tried to justify himself this once by telling himself that it wasn’t cheating, he was merely giving her a little hint. 

 

“Leave me alone,” she said. He saw her jot down another incorrect answer, and he bit down on his lip.

 

“You have to shift the decimal to the left in the coefficient,” he whispered. “It’s scientific notation.”

 

“I know that! Leave me alone!” she said, evidently getting more annoyed with him, which in turn was starting to annoy Jinyoung. He didn’t doubt that she was smart enough to do math figures on her own, but he was just trying to help. 

 

“I get it, I’m not stupid!” she said.

 

“I didn’t say—“

 

“Just leave me alone!” 

 

Again struck by the force in her voice, Jinyoung sat back down in his own seat and decided to respect her wishes this time. He was worried that she’d fall back in math class, but he surprised when just the opposite happened. The next time Mr. Hong called her up to the board to write a long number in scientific notation, she got it correct. In just a short amount of time, she was finishing her problem sets faster than anyone else, including him. A couple girls were now asking _her_ to help them with their problem sets.

 

Jinyoung was impressed. Pretty _and_ smart. He was inspired. He started working even harder to catch up with her, knowing that a girl as beautiful and intelligent as Jisoo wouldn’t be satisfied with a boy who couldn’t keep up. It wasn’t long before they were the two smartest kids in the room. He thought for sure that that now that they were on even ground, she’d want to be friends with him. But her attitude toward him didn’t improve, not even the following year when they were voted co-class representatives.

 

By that time, Jinyoung had given up his quest to become her best friend. For the most part, their partnership as co-reps was civil and functional, though not very friendly or warm. But he decided it was more important to be a reliable partner, even if it was only for the purposes of running the class together. 

 

When the school fair came around, Jisoo came up with the idea of asking the class to write short essays about what they believed the future held for them. Jinyoung knew she’d excel at this; being a writer was what she wanted to be, after all. When she submitted her piece to be judged, he was touched by what she’d written. But he knew that it wouldn’t help her growth as a writer if he only blindly praised her. He sat down and read over her piece and tried to be as fair in his criticism as possible, praising her where it was fair and giving her constructive feedback where it was needed.

 

When he presented it to her, however, she looked offended.

 

“It’s fine!” she insisted at the panel meeting with himself and Mr. Hong. 

 

“Yeah, but it feels kind of…” he tried to think of a word that wouldn’t anger her further. “…unpolished.”

 

Jinyoung didn’t know if it was his criticism that motivated her, but when she took her essay back and resubmitted it with essays, it was even better. She had polished it up and he was blown away by her talent. Jinyoung looked at his own essay and felt embarrassed. Once he finished reading hers, he sat back at his desk and decided that he needed to polish his as well. 

 

But when his and Jisoo’s essays were chosen as the best in the bunch, Jisoo didn’t look pleased with him. Jinyoung was proud of his work as well as hers, so he didn’t understand why Jisoo couldn’t feel the same way. 

 

They ended up going to the same high school, too. But that world was so different from their small middle school. They ran in different circles and hung out in different crowds. There were fewer and fewer opportunities to interact. In time Jinyoung’s crush on her faded until she was just another classmate towards whom he bore no ill will. He shifted his focus to his studies and supporting his family.

 

Since his father died, things hadn’t been going well for them, financially. His mother worked as a school nurse at an elementary school. His eldest sister was away at college and would be graduating soon, and his other sister had a job at a convenience store. Still, they just barely got by with the money they made. Jinyoung knew that if he wanted to go to college, he’d need a scholarship. He would need to watch himself, step carefully, stand out, and not make any mistakes.

 

The plan was going well, until one day Mrs. Choi called him to the office.

 

“You've forgotten to turn in your test, Jinyoung,” she said. He blinked in confusion.

 

“What?”

 

“Your test!” she said, gesturing to the stack of testing sheets next to the stack of response sheets. Jinyoung was confused.

 

“But I _did_ turn it in,” he said, getting nervous. “Check the stack again, please.”

 

“I’ve checked it twice, three times,” Mrs. Choi said, her voice stern. “Jinyoung, you have to turn that test back into me now. This is very serious. If I find out you stole it and you’ve been circulating it among the other students, I’ll have to write you a violation.”

 

Jinyoung’s stomach lurched at the sound of the word. “But I didn’t steal it,” he insisted.

 

“Then who did?”

 

After being excused from the office, Jinyoung ran back to the classroom and scoured his desk. He was almost absolutely positive that he had turned it in and that it wasn’t in his desk or in his bag or in his room or in any manner of his possession at all. Mrs. Choi insisted that she didn’t lose it, either. But where could it have gone? He walked over to Mrs. Choi’s desk at the front of the room and carefully checked it in case the paper had slid underneath or managed to get into one of the drawers. Nothing.

 

That was when he realized that one other person who came into contact with the stack of tests was that week’s class helper. He walked to the schedule posted by the door and checked who was on duty for the week. 

 

It was Jisoo.

 

Jinyoung’s stomach flipped as he read her name. Jisoo couldn’t have done it. Jisoo was one of the smartest people in their class, she wouldn’t need to steal a test to cheat. Jinyoung was positive that she didn’t do it, and he was disturbed that there was a voice inside him telling him to go ask her anyway. 

 

He shook his head. She couldn’t have done it. Could she?

 

Screw it, he thought. Classes had just let out for the day. If he hurried, he might catch her in by the shoe lockers. There was no harm in just asking, just to be sure. When he went down and intercepted her, he saw Song Mino, a second year hanging close by. Jisoo had just dropped her shoes to the floor and was about to put them on when Jinyoung approached her.

 

“You’re in charge of taking the tests up to the office, right?” he asked. Jisoo looked at him and he tried to ignore the look of panic on her face. 

 

“No,” she said, but Jinyoung knew she was lying. In the corner of his vision, he saw Mino looking at them. 

 

“Did you take it?” Jinyoung asked, blocking her before she could leave. Jisoo looked tense. Nervous. Guilty.

 

“No!” she said. 

 

Jinyoung’s heart sank. How could she have answered unless she knew what he was talking about? Catching her blunder, she stuttered, saying:

 

“I mean… what are you talking about?”

 

“You _did_ take it, didn’t you?” he asked. Jisoo was trying to turn away from him, but he kept pressing her. “Jisoo! Why?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she said, trying to get past him. “Get out of my way!”

 

Jinyoung didn’t know why Jisoo was denying it. He could tell that she knew that he already knew the truth. What was the point in denying it now? Her stubbornness was starting to hurt him.

 

“You have to tell Mrs. Choi,” he said, desperation in his voice. “Jisoo, tell Mrs. Choi!”

 

“Tell her what? That I brought the tests up to her office like asked? Like I usually do?”

 

“That you cheated,” Jinyoung said, immediately hating himself for making saying it in such an accusatory voice. The last thing he wanted was to get Jisoo in trouble, but he also wanted to give her the chance to tell the truth. Instead, she gave him a dark look and insisted, again, that she didn’t cheat. 

 

Maybe she never warmed to his friendly advances in middle school, but he never would have expected something like this from her. Whatever doubt he had left in him about her, he held onto them. Deep down, Jisoo is a good person, he told himself. She’ll do the right thing.

 

“Jisoo,” he said. “This isn’t right… Tell Mrs. Choi—”

 

“She doesn’t have to say anything,” said Mino, stepping between him and Jisoo and putting an arm around her. Jinyoung was confused at first, not understanding why Mino was suddenly intruding. But then he looked between the second year’s smug face and then at the numb expression on Jisoo’s face, and then he understood. This was all Mino’s plan, wasn’t it? 

 

Jinyoung looked back at Jisoo, trying to catch her eyes. A kind of sadness washed over him, seeing her caught in this. 

 

“You don’t have to do this,” he said softly, trying to reach the light that he knew was still in her. He reached out and put his hand on her arm. “This isn’t you. Just tell Mrs. Choi the truth. I won’t be mad, I promise, but you have to—”

 

Jisoo took her arm out of his grasp and then gave him a cold stare.

 

He stared at her for a long time, looking her up and down, her slender form leaning against Song Mino. His mind raced back to that very first day he saw her, how hard and completely he’d fallen for her back then. All these years, he believed that she was a kind-hearted, intelligent, respectable person that he wanted to be friends with, and whom he wouldn’t mind falling in love with one day.

 

But he was wrong about her. Jinyoung looked Jisoo up and down and didn’t recognize the spineless, false, cowardly girl that stood there. Why he had ever liked her, he could no longer remember. 

 

Life went on. Song Mino was expelled from school, and Jisoo never spoke another word to him. Which was fine by him, since he was busy avoiding her, too. He ended up wrongfully accepting the consequences for Jisoo and Mino’s cheating, and then decided that he needed to work even harder to make up for this one black mark on his record. He set his sights on the valedictorian spot.

 

His academic rivalry with Jisoo intensified. Anytime he thought he was making progress, she would lap him and then throw him a dirty look. It only motivated him to work even hard, to overtake her. He studied longer, harder, more often, fueled by his own bitterness and indignation and his own resentment of her.

 

And then one day, with graduation nigh upon them, Jinyoung and Jisoo were facing each other in the principal’s office. They both had the highest GPA’s in the school. They matched each other at almost every category, whether it was in academics, extracurriculars, sports, or community involvement. They were both headed for prestigious universities on generous scholarships. They were matched so well, that the principal decided that whichever of them wrote the better speech would be awarded the valedictorian title.

 

Jisoo turned and looked at him in what seemed like the first time in years, and she had a smug look on her face. Jinyoung kept his expression blank and unreadable. He couldn’t let her see how afraid he was. 

 

Jinyoung went home, packed his bags and then loaded up his dad’s old truck. He couldn’t afford any distractions at this time. Armed with a couple days’ worth of supplies, clothing, and paper, he drove down the road and back up to his and his dad’s old camping ground, the one between Starry Meadow and the waterfall. 

 

Jisoo wanted to be a writer, he knew that. He had read her papers and her essays before, he knew what she could do with a couple of hours and a word processor. She was the best writer in their school. He knew that if he was going to beat Jisoo at her own game, he needed all of his focus.

 

After setting up camp, he wandered into Starry Meadow with a thick blanket and a stack of paper tucked under his arm. When he was younger, he was confused about why it was called Starry Meadow since all these wildflowers looked more like suns anyway. But the field had special significance to him. When he was a kid, this is where her always went to think about big ideas. He found a clearing in the middle of the field and sat there, summoning all the focus he could muster. 

 

If he planned on beating Kim Peachu at her own game, he would need to write the speech to end all speeches. 

 

 


	10. Off Script

Jinyoung rose early on Wednesday morning and almost forgot why until he checked his phone and saw twelve text messages and two emails from Jisoo. She’d sent them to him at three in the morning last night, and all of them were reminders for him to wake up early and wear something nice to the meeting.

 

Right. He was going with her to meet Julie Kiyoko, Embrace’s managing editor.

 

After that night at carnival, Jisoo had sent him an online social media profile that she had made specifically to fool Ms. Kiyoko into think they’d been dating for a while. She had also forced him to pose for pictures at the carnival to have something more recent to show her. She had also texted asking him for a selca she could use as a fake background for her phone. He took one with the front-facing camera on his phone and sent it to her, but then she complained about the lighting, so he decided to ignore her until morning just to annoy her.

 

After a trip to the bathroom for all his morning rituals, he dressed himself in the least offending outfit he could come up with, which ended up being a navy blue suit he had worn just once, when he presented one of his research papers at a symposium last year. He switched the white button-down out for a black shirt to tone down the formality and decided it would do. The Oxfords Nawon had bought him were his only pair of formal shoes, so he settled for those. But he reminded himself to buy a new pair once Jisoo paid him.

 

When he opened the emails she’d sent to him, one was a very long, detailed written account of their fake relationship. A script of sorts for him to stick to when Julie inevitably asked him things like how they met (through school), her favorite color (purple), and who wore the pants in their relationship (her, but he was definitely going to negotiate that later.) There were also some fictional embellishments describing non-existent dates they’d gone on. She had also completely glossed over the part where they hate each other. Altogether, though, he was actually a little impressed at how much planning had gone into this. And her writing was as good as ever.

 

Jisoo told him to meet her one subway stop away from the Jeon & Sky Publishing offices so that they could been seen walking to the building together. He spotted her standing by a turnstiles. She was wearing a pale pink office dress, and her hair was curled. She was busily typing something on her phone. When he was close enough, she looked him up and down.

 

Navy blue really was the sexiest of the suits colors, but she’d be damned before she admitted to herself that Jinyoung actually looked good. Jisoo tried to justify her thoughts by conceding that all men looked good in a suit.

 

“What took you so long?” Jisoo asked before she allow herself to think about that anymore. This was no time to lose her head. Jinyoung looked annoyed at her.

 

“At least I’m here, aren’t I?” he said, trying not to get distracted by soft her curls look. “By the way, I’m going to start giving you daily reminders that you haven’t even paid me yet.”

 

“I haven’t even been hired, yet,” Jisoo said. “And don’t say that around here, someone from the office might hear you. Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

Jisoo and Jinyoung rode the elevator up to the third floor and the same girl from last time led them over to a waiting area. The receptionist was a good deal friendlier than Jisoo remembered her, even going so far as to offer her and Jinyoung water and placing a small bowl of rice crackers on the table in front of them. A sugary smile in Jinyoung’s direction, however, solved that mystery.

 

Jinyoung reached out and took a handful of the rice crackers. Jisoo had been hurrying him all morning, so he skipped breakfast. He put one into his mouth and took a look around the office. So, this was where Jisoo wanted to work. He’d seen her reading the magazine before, during lunchtime in high school, although he personally wasn’t too familiar with it.

 

Still, it was a far cry from the kind of work environment he’d imagined Jisoo ending up in: all harsh lighting, phones ringing, and people who looked a good deal more cutthroat than he expected romance writers to look. Then again, thinking back to that smug look Jisoo had given him in the principal’s office all those years ago, maybe she was exactly where she was meant to be.

 

Popping another rice cracker into his mouth, he looked over at his “girlfriend.” Jisoo was sitting still with her spine as straight as an arrow and twice and tense. He noticed she was holding something in her hands, pressed tight between her palms like a rosary.

 

“What’s that?” he asked.

 

“It’s a lucky charm,” Jisoo said without looking at him. He noticed her mouthing something to herself quietly. She was trying to control her breathing.

 

“Why are you so nervous?” he said. “I thought you said they liked you.”

 

“They do like me,” she said, turning and narrowing her eyes at him. “It’s you I’m nervous about.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “Why?” he said, grabbing another handful of crackers from the bowl. “Let me guess: you’ve considered the possibility that I’m only doing this to sabotage you?”

 

He’d meant it at as a joke, but he watched as all the blood drained from her face. Her expression was ashen and grave.

 

“Park Jinyoung,” she said in a low, threatening voice. “I’m not kidding. If you’re only doing this to sabotage me, I _swear_ , I will—”

 

Jinyoung stuffed a rice cracker into her mouth, muffling her voice.

 

“I’m joking,” he said, though he was offended that Jisoo really though he would try to keep her from getting hired at her dream job. “You really think I’m the type of guy who would try to hurt your chances at advancing your career? You think I would do that? Thanks a lot.”

 

Jisoo wanted to snap at him, but she was too busy chewing the rice cracker. After swallowing, she turned an insulted expression at him.

 

“Yeah? Well, your middle and high school record doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” she said, crossing her arms.

 

“What are you talking about?” Jinyoung said, genuinely confused. “I never tried to sabotage you in middle school.”

 

Hearing him deny it, however, only made Jisoo even more annoyed. “You called me Kim Peachu in front of the entire class,” she said. “That was day _one_! Right from the start, you were trying to humiliate me in front of everyone.”

 

Jinyoung gaped at her and then laughed only because he couldn’t believe she was still holding that against him.

 

“Wasn’t that was your nickname, though?” he asked. He distinctly remembered stopping by the fruit stand by Kim’s Peaches and Plums and hearing some of the neighborhood children call her that. He thought she would like it if someone at her new school knew her nickname. But Jisoo kept her arms crossed. It wasn’t her nickname, it was just the name that the other kids used when they were calling her stupid or simple.

 

“What? No. It wasn’t,” she said. “What, did you talk to the neighborhood bullies where I lived to find some dirt on me before I transferred?”

 

“No, course not!” he said, growing exasperated. “Jisoo, I was just trying to be friendly. I honestly thought that was your nickname. I didn’t know you hated it. You’re being a little immature, that was years ago. Is that really why you’ve hated me all these years?”

 

“Keep your voice down,” she said, seeing the receptionist hurrying over. Jisoo quickly put on a smile and tried to pretend everything was fine. The receptionist told them that Julie Kiyoko was finally out of a meeting and could speak with them in the conference room. As they were being led down the hall, Jisoo leaned in and whispered to Jinyoung.

 

“Remember, you agreed not to let what happened back then get in the way of this,” she said.

 

“And it won’t,” Jinyoung said. “Not unless _you_ let it.” Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him again and was about to argue, but the receptionist turned back to see that they were still following her. Jisoo smiled at her, and then she hooked her wrist around Jinyoung’s arm, trying to looking like a normal couple having a conversation. She even laughed out loud, trying to act like he’d said something funny.

 

“Wow, you’re so funny! Hahaha! My funny boyfriend,” she said. Jinyoung cringed. When the receptionist wasn’t looking, he leaned in and whispered:

 

“Don’t _ever_ do that again.”

 

They reached the conference room before Jisoo could come up with snarky reply. Julie was seated in the same spot she occupied last time, though she had switched out her vintage blue glasses for a pair that made her look like a petite, Japanese Harry Potter. Still the same sugary sweet smile, though.

 

“Jisoo!” she said cheerfully. “I’m so glad you could make it! You’ve no idea how relieved I am that you’ve come back. It’s been a nightmare trying to fill this position. I see you’ve come bearing good news.”

 

Jinyoung smiled. Time to turn on the charm, he thought. He leaned forward and stretched a hand out to greet Julie Kiyoko and introduced himself as Jisoo’s boyfriend. When Julie invited them to sit, he even pulled out Jisoo’s chair for her. So far, so good. Julie took her seat as well, and Jisoo saw that she had her resume out again, as well as her writing sample. A tablet by her elbow was open to the online profile Jisoo had set up for herself and Jinyoung.

 

Jinyoung wasn’t sure why he was feeling nervous, too. Julie Kiyoko must have noticed because she gave him a reassuring smile.

 

“No need to be nervous,” Julie said. “You’re not the one being interviewed, and anyway, your girlfriend and I have already had our talk. I just called this meeting so we could meet each other.”

 

Jinyoung was about to reply, but he was cut off by Jisoo’s fake laughter again. “Hahaha!” she playfully hit his shoulder. “Yeah, sweetie-pie, no need to be nervous! He’s so cute. He gets nervous sometimes.”

 

He gripped the armrest to keep himself from crawling under the table, overwhelmed by secondhand embarrassment. Then he remembered that Jisoo never had a boyfriend before, and her behavior suddenly made sense. Still, she had to tone this down. She was seriously overselling this whole boyfriend thing. Even Julie Kiyoko looked a little put off. Sweetie-pie?

 

“So,” Julie said. “Let’s move on, shall we? I guess I’ll start by saying I’m so happy for you, Jisoo. For the both of you. I’ve been scrolling through the profile you sent me, you make such a happy couple. So, Jinyoung, you two met in high school?”

 

“In middle school, actually,” Jinyoung said. That part was easy since it was true, but he had to rack his brain trying to remember if there were any other details from Jisoo’s email that he was leaving out. “We… set near each other in math class, got partnered up a lot.”

 

Julie smiled. “So was it love at first sight?” she asked.

 

“Yes,” Jinyoung said. That wasn’t in the script, but he couldn’t remember what the right answer was. He just figured it didn’t make a difference.

 

“How sweet,” Julie said. “Childhood friends turned sweethearts. So, at what point did you realize you had relationship level feelings for each other?”

 

Shit. He couldn’t remember what the script said about that. “I… I don’t know,” he said, and he could practically feel Jisoo seething in her chair. What did she write in that email? Think. Think. Say _something_!

 

“Actually,” Jinyoung said, opting to just say anything rather than stay silent. Behind her smile, Jisoo looked slightly panicked. “Actually, I sort of always liked her. Right from the first day of school, I—”

 

Jinyoung blushed. He’d never said this aloud before, ever. Jisoo held her breath. What was he doing? This wasn’t part of the script. Was he improvising?

 

“From the first day of school, I thought she was a prettiest girl I’d ever seen,” Jinyoung said. “We sat near each other in math, and I looked for any excuse to talk to her. She… must have been focusing really hard on her work, though, because she liked to ignore me.”

 

Julie giggled and Jisoo followed it up with another round of forced laughter, although she sounded more nervous this time. Jinyoung was feeling a little nervous, too.

 

“Well, a girl needs to play hard-to-get sometimes,” Julie said. “Did you ask her out after that?”

 

“No,” Jinyoung said, still improvising. “She… seemed really driven even when we were younger. She really wanted to be a writer, and I knew she didn’t like me, so I was content just to… be a supporter, I guess.”

 

That wasn’t in the script, either. Jisoo was inwardly panicking. Jinyoung’s version of the events was steering too far from the plan she had set up.

 

“Although, I felt like at that point, she still had a ways to go,” Jinyoung said, thinking about the unpolished essay Jisoo wrote in middle school. Jisoo’s smile faded and she shot him a hurt look.

 

“I don’t think you were in much of a position to make that call back then, either, Jinyoung,” she snapped, momentarily breaking character. “How many pieces did _you_ have published at twelve years old? Same as me, _zero_.”

 

Jisoo froze and then looked at Julie Kiyoko. Then, she laughed nervously. “Hahaha!” Jisoo said. “I mean… that’s not very nice, cupcake. Haha!”

 

Julie laughed, genuinely. “Looks like I found a sore spot,” she said. “We can let that one go for now. So, when did you realize you had feelings for Jisoo beyond friendship?”

 

Jinyoung froze. It had been easy to improvise for the other questions since he didn’t have to stray too far from the truth. But the truth this time was: he didn’t have those feelings. All he could think about was that day he confronted Jisoo at the shoe lockers. That was the day he knew those feelings would never come. Jisoo watched the side of his face, growing more and more frantic the longer the silence took. She had to do something.

 

“It was in high school!” Jisoo said, jumping in. Jinyoung looked at her, startled. “The first year of high school, actually. Actually, it’s quite funny, I had a crush on another boy at that time.”

 

Jinyoung couldn’t believe she was bringing this up. This _definitely_ was not in the script, and this was so _not_ when he realized he liked her as more than a friend. But Jisoo didn’t once look at him as she spun her tale.

 

“Anyway, this boy I liked pressured me to help him and his friends cheat on a test,” Jisoo said. “So I stole one from the classroom so they could study it ahead of time and know the answers. Turns out, the test I stole was Jinyoung’s.”

 

Julie widened her eyes, not expecting this twist. Jisoo continued: “He confronted me after school about it,” Jisoo said, each word taking her further back through the years, back to that moment.

 

“I saw coming toward me at the shoe lockers, and my heart started pounding,” Jisoo said, her voice getting lower as she spoke. “I thought for sure he was going to start shouting at me and calling me a cheater and a liar. I was ready for him to.”

 

Jisoo remembered that moment with crystal clarity. She thought about it often, even though she considered it one of her darkest moments. She swallowed before continuing.

 

“But he wasn’t mad, he was just worried,” Jisoo said, fidgeting with her hands. “He tried to tell me it was okay, he wasn’t mad. He just wanted me to tell the truth. And gave me the chance to, too. I’m not someone who cheats or lies or plays dirty, Ms. Kiyoko. I think Jinyoung knew that, then. But the boy I liked was behind me, so I couldn’t say anything.”

 

She was starting ahead at Julie Kiyoko, but her mind was eight years in the past, staring at a fourteen year old Jinyoung’s back as he walked away from her. Jisoo let out a slow breath and spoke softly:

 

“I think that was the moment I realized that I just lost something good.”

 

Jinyoung hadn’t realized he was clenching his fist the entire time she spoke. What did she call this, an apology? He’d yet to hear her say she was sorry. Jisoo slowly turned to look at Jinyoung’s face, but she couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Much like his expression looked as she stared at her that day. But, then remembering where she was, she looked back at Julie and laughed.

 

“Haha!” she said. “Anyway, we reconnected a few weeks ago and set aside our differences and now we’re very happy! Isn’t that right, pumpkin?”

 

Jinyoung couldn’t keep up with her switches. He just cleared his throat and nodded. Julie widened her eyes and looked impressed at the two of them. And just he usually felt when she spent any measure of time with Jisoo, Jinyoung wondered what in the world had just happened. He couldn’t believe Julie Kiyoko was actually buying all this, even after he’d gone off-script and with Jisoo’s fake-ass girlfriend act. In the end, Julie Kiyoko told Jisoo that she still needed to talk this over with the administrative board before she could decide anything.

 

Julie thanked them for their time and walked them as far as the elevator. Aside from a polite goodbye, Jisoo was silent.

 

“That went well, I think,” Jinyoung said, once they were out on the sidewalk. Jisoo turned to him and her eyes were wide with panic.

 

“That was a disaster!” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“Jinyoung, it went so badly!” Jisoo said, pressing a hand to her forehead. “What was I thinking? Why did I think this was going to work?”

 

Jinyoung was puzzled. “Jisoo, it was fine,” he said. “I mean, yeah, I forgot the majority of what you wrote in that email, but it was fine. Julie totally bought it.”

 

“Why did I say those things?” Jisoo said, though he figured she was speaking more to herself than him at this point. “I was acting so weird in there, I don’t know what came over me. Oh my god, I even called you ‘sweetie-pie,’ gross!”

 

Jinyoung stepped back and let Jisoo wallow in her hysterics for a minute, knowing better than to try and get her to see reason when she was too far gone into her own head. Probably a symptom of her being a writer, he thought, these flights of fancy. Personally, he thought the meeting could have been a lot worse.

 

“And you!” Jisoo said, finally turning to him and wagging a finger in his face. “I specifically told you what to say in the email I sent to you at 3:24 AM last night! You had more than enough time to study it.”

 

“At 3:24 AM last night, I was asleep,” Jinyoung said. “I didn’t see that email until this morning, you can’t expect me to re-learn ten years of our personal history in an hour.”

 

“But still, you didn’t have to tell her a version of the story that was that close to reality,” Jisoo said. “If she finds out we actually hate each other, the whole thing falls apart! She’ll know that we’re not really dating!”

 

“Jisoo?” said a voice. They both froze and they both turned around and saw Julie Kiyoko walking toward them on the sidewalk. Shit. How much of their conversation had she overheard? Jisoo and Jinyoung wore shocked expressions on their faces all the way up until Julie Kiyoko stopped in front of them. Oh god, Jisoo thought. She must be here to yell at her about fraud.

 

Jisoo braced herself for Julie Kiyoko to unleash her wrath, but instead of shouting, Ms. Kiyoko smiled.

 

“You look so worried,” she jested. “Not at all like someone who just became the new Editorial Assistant at Embrace.”

 

New assistant—? It took Jisoo a second to fully grasp what Julie Kiyoko meant. Jisoo was so shocked she couldn’t even speak, or breathe that much. All she could was squeal and laugh and tell Julie Kiyoko was unbelievably grateful she was. Julie offered her a handshake and her congratulations and told her to report to the offices in two weeks for her first day of work. After one last congratulations, she went back into the building, leaving Jisoo alone to celebrate on the sidewalk.

 

Her happiness was so complete even Jinyoung couldn’t help but feel relieved.

 

 

 


	11. The Gumiho

“All I am saying is,” Lisa said, holding up her index finger and wagging it at the other girls. “If a guy lands in my friend zone, there’s a chance I might randomly develop feelings for him. But Bambam is like family, there is absolutely _zero_ chance that I will ever date him, so just step off!”

 

“Fine!” Rose said, putting her hands up in surrender. “All I said was that if you changed your mind, I think it’d be cute.”

 

They were at the Gumiho, a bar a couple streets down from campus to celebrate Jisoo’s last day at Vector Marketing. After meeting Julie Kiyoko and landing the job at Embrace, she’d gone straight home and printed out her letter of resignation (she had already drafted it on her phone on the train.) Her roommates, Lisa, Rose, and Jennie were all in attendance, and the girls were sitting at a table by the wall with a bottle of soju each, except Rose who always opened every night of drinking with a glass of sparkling rosé in honor of her namesake. 

 

The lighting was dim, as expected in a bar, but the atmosphere was lively. There was a boxing match playing on the TV and half the boys in the establishment were crowding around it. The girls had to yell to hear each other.

 

“Hey, hey!” Jisoo said. “No fighting! We’re here to celebrate me finally saying goodbye to Vector Marketing for good. I want to see more drinking and more smiling and less arguing!” 

 

“We’re not arguing,” Rose insisted, finishing off her glass of pink champagne. “How can we argue if we can’t even hear each other?”

 

Jisoo poured some of her half-gone soju into a shot glass and handed it to Rose since she finished her rosé. Then she tipped the bottle up and drank some herself. On one side of the Gumiho, the boys erupted into cheers after one of the boxers landed a six-punch combo. Lisa cheered, too, since she was half-watching the match from their table. Jisoo took a handful of fries from the plate in the center of the table and stuffed her face.

 

“You know what I’m _not_ gonna miss the most about Vector Marketing?” Jisoo said, her mouth half full of fries potatoes. “My bitchy, stuck-up, power-tripping supervisor, that’s who.”

 

“You mean the one who gave you the wrong meeting time on purpose so you had to wake up at 4 AM?” Lisa asked. Jisoo nodded.

 

“Exactly that one.”

 

“Oh my goodness, okay, look now,” Jennie said. She grabbed Jisoo’s wrist and squeezed it tight as she looked over at the bar. Her new boyfriend, Jackson, was a bartender at the Gumiho, and he was hard at work squeezing the juice out of lemon and into a glass. Jennie squealed.

 

“Look at his arms!” she said giddily. It was a bit warm in the Gumiho, and Jackson had worn a t-shirt, but rolled the sleeves up. His biceps glowed with light perspiration. Jennie swooned. “Isn’t he so hot? How did I get so lucky?”

 

“Yes, we know,” Rose said, giggling. “We only heard you the last _fourteen_ times you pointed it out since we got here.”

 

“Oh my god, do I really talk about it that much?” Jennie said, turning back to the girls. “Sorry! Am I getting annoying?”

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Rose said, throwing a shot back into her mouth. Once the initial burn passed, she turned back to Jennie. “Ogle your hot boyfriend all you want. But I’d just like to point out that Jisoo’s hot TA is here, too, and _look_ what he’s wearing.”

 

Jisoo was in the middle of stuffing another handful of fries into her mouth when she heard Lisa say that Jaebum was in the room. She turned around to look in the direction she was pointing, and sure enough, there he was. Wearing a black tank top. Perspiration clung to his skin and made it glisten, and her eyes were especially drawn to his muscled arms. She thought she might choke on the fries.

 

“Ooh. Impressive,” Jennie said, winking at Jisoo. “Now I know why you can’t pay attention in class.”

 

“I did _not_ know he was hiding those in his suit jacket sleeves,” Jisoo said after successfully swallowing potatoes. “Holy baloney. It’s better than I could have hoped.”

 

“They’re alright,” Lisa said, shrugging. 

 

“Excuse me?” Rose said, bumping her with an elbow. Lisa turned defensive again.

 

“What? I didn’t say he was, like, skinny or anything,” Lisa said. “I’m just not really a biceps person.”

 

“But you dated that personal trainer!” Jennie said.

 

“Once!”

 

“You went out for two months! His biceps were huge!”

 

“You think he wore that shirt on purpose?” Jisoo said, still staring longingly at Jaebum, who stood behind the crowd watching the match and was talking to a friend. He ran a hand through his hair, and Jisoo fantasized being the one to run her fingers through his silky locks. When she looked around the room, she realized she and her friends weren’t the only girls taking notice of him. She burned with jealousy when Jaebum turned and talked to a girl watching the match.

 

“They could be staring at my boyfriend, too, you know?” Jennie said. Rose scoffed.

 

“And you’re happy about that?”

 

While the girls talked, Jisoo’s gaze roamed from Jaebum’s face down to his shoulders and his arms. Jaebum was lean and athletic-looking. She was almost positive that he was aware that girls liked to take long, appreciative looks at his biceps, because why else would he wear that shirt on a night like this? Jisoo took another sip of her soju, and then the _weirdest_ , most _unwelcome_ thought suddenly occurred to her:

 

Jinyoung had biceps, too. 

 

He wasn’t exactly in the habit of wearing short sleeves like Jaebum, even when the sweltering weather practically demanded it, so Jisoo never actually _saw_ his biceps. But… she felt them. The other day, at the interview. While trying to convince Julie Kiyoko that they were a legitimate couple, Jisoo slipped her hand around his arm like a girlfriend would, and… she felt them… through the cloth of his sleeve. His biceps.

 

That wasn’t weird, right? she asked herself. It wasn’t as if she was purposely trying to feel his arms. She was just acting her part. Feeling his arms, that was just a bonus.

 

A _bonus_? Jisoo smacked herself for thinking that. Maybe she _was_ starting to get too tipsy. 

 

“Jisoo! Quick! We need more fries,” Rose said, grabbing her arm and shaking her out of her stupor.

 

“What?” she said. She looked down at their plate of fries and there was still plenty to go around. “There’s more here.”

 

“No, we need _more_ ,” Rose said. Then she grabbed the plate and tossed the rest of the fries to the floor, and Jisoo felt almost offended on behalf of the fried potatoes strings. “Get more fries. Go. Hurry!”

 

Jisoo scoffed and grabbed the now empty plate. She looked up at the bar, where she would need to go to place another order for food, and then she realized why Rose insisted she get more fries. Jaebum was there, and for once, he wasn’t surrounded by girls or occupied with friends. Jaebum was at the bar, alone. Jisoo’s face paled. When she looked back at her friends, they all gave her expectant looks and motioned for her to get little butt over the bar to talk to him. 

 

“Go! Gogogo!” said Lisa, Rose, and Jennie all at once. Jisoo grabbed the plate and got up from her seat with a clamor. She was trying to be quick, trying to get to the bar before she convinced herself otherwise. 

 

 _Be cool, just be cool_ , she told herself. With each step that brought her closer to the bar, her heart sped up. Before she quite got there, she turned around and gave her girl friends one last look. They all flashed her a thumbs-up, and Lisa waved her empty soju bottle. Jisoo gulped. When she turned back around, Jaebum was right in front of her. 

 

Her TA smirked when he recognized her. 

 

“Well, if it isn’t my star student,” he teased. Jisoo giggled nervously. 

 

“Hey,” she said in a breathy voice. Jaebum smiled. Jisoo didn’t know what to say, so she just leaned against the bar, staring into his dreamy face. When that got awkward, Jaebum laughed a little and said:

 

“Can I buy you a drink?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Jisoo said, feeling giddy and giggling a little too much. Jaebum turned and was about to signal the bartender when Jisoo suddenly remembered: “Oh! Wait, no. We actually need more fries.”

 

Jaebum turned to her with one brow raised quizzically. Jisoo couldn’t believe she’d just said that as if he were a waiter.

 

“I can buy you that, too,” Jaebum said. He took the empty plate from her hands and set it down on the bar. Jisoo, now that her hands were empty, started to fidget with her hair. 

 

“Yeah, uh… Rose dropped them, so they sent me here to get more,” she said, her voice an octave higher than usual. Jaebum nodded and then followed Jisoo’s line of sight as she gestured to her group of friends. Lisa waved with her empty bottle again. Jaebum laughed lightly.

 

“It looks like your friend could use another soju, too,” he said. Jisoo laughed a little too artificially. Jaebum took a drink from his beer and then continued making conversation.

 

“So,” he said. “I heard you quit your job.”

 

Jisoo’s smile faltered.

 

“Oh. Yeah,” she said.

 

“At Vector Marketing,” Jaebum said. Jisoo was floored that he knew where she worked, but he looked concerned. “Jisoo, that’s a tough gig to land, their reports were unbelievable last year, they had the top earnings. Why’d you quit?”

 

Why did I quit? she thought. The reasons are numerous and complicated, but mostly because I was miserable there, my boss treated me like shit, literally everyone was an immature asshole on a power-trip, and I actually hate marketing, especially Vector Marketing. 

 

But Jisoo couldn’t say that. She looked up at Jaebum, though, and he had the weirdest look on his face. 

 

“Oh,” he said. It just then occurred to Jisoo that she’d committed a mistake that she did often:

 

“I didn’t say that out loud just now, did I?” she said, her face getting hot. Jaebum looked slightly pained by how awkward everything just became. Jisoo, mentally scolding herself for being the way she was, tried to salvage the situation. She laughed, nervously.

 

“I must be way drunker than I think I am,” she said, pressing a hand to her cheek. “I’m usually not this clumsy. Let’s just pretend I never said that. Let’s not talk about Vector Marketing, _super_ boring topic anyway, awful company, too.” 

 

Jaebum raised his brows again and then nodded, slowly. Jisoo scrambled to save face.

 

“Uh, let’s talk about you!” she said, putting on a smile. “So. Do you have a job?”

 

“Yes, I do, actually,” Jaebum said. He put his hands into his pocket. “I work at Vector Marketing.”

 

Jisoo was so shocked she couldn’t even react. Of course. Of course, this would happen. She tried to laugh it off, but the sounds that came out of her mouths sounded a bit more like choking. She clenched her fists and started to nod exaggeratedly. She wondered what were the odds of an asteroid striking the city, with the Gumiho as the center, at this very moment. 

 

“Okay!” she said. “Well, it was great talking to you. You know, actually, I think I’ll just pay for my own fries. I can afford it and… feminism, you know, haha. Thank you.”

 

Jaebum just nodded, collected his beer bottle and then rejoined his friends around the television. Jisoo groaned and then lowered her head down to the bar. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The bartender, Jackson, asked her if she was okay and she just mumbled out a curt reply then pushed the empty plate toward him.

 

“Can I get another plate of fries?” she said. “And if you have some antifreeze or any other fast-acting poisonous substances, I’ll take a glass of that.”

 

“Antifreeze wouldn't kill you for another 48 hours,” said someone taking the barstool next to her. “If you want fast-acting, I’d definitely order liquid cyanide.”

 

Jisoo didn’t even have to look up to know that it was Jinyoung who just took the chair, but she looked up at him anyway. He looked a little scruffier than usual, with a five o’clock shadow and unkempt hair. Though it wasn’t a bad look for him. 

 

“I’ll take one glass of that for _him_ ,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung laughed.

 

“I shouldn’t,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’ve had two already, and I’ve got work in the morning. You know, at Vector Marketing.”

 

Jisoo groaned and lowered her head back down to the bar at the sound of “Vector Marketing.” If she didn’t hate her old job before, she absolutely despised it now, along with the whole company. Jinyoung was drinking from a glass of ice water. He swirled the ice around with a thin straw.

 

“So,” he said carefully, looking at Jisoo and then at the crowd watching the boxing match. “He’s… cute. Who is he?”

 

“TA in one of my business courses,” Jisoo said, pulling herself together, though she was still too shaken up to come up with a smart-alecky reply. “His name is Im Jaebum.”

 

“You like him,” Jinyoung said evenly. He looked over at the boy in the tank top, who was hanging back from the crowd, watching the screen intently, smirking every once in a while. “I guess that’s your type, isn’t it?” Jinyoung asked.

 

“What is?” Jisoo said, giving him a challenging stare.

 

“Tall. Lean. Athletic. Tough guy. Mysterious-looking,” Jinyoung said, counting off the traits on his fingers. “Looks like he’d be the dark, brooding male lead in a drama.”

 

“Is there a reason you’re so into my taste in men?” Jisoo asked. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“I guess I’m just trying to figure out why you decided to make _me_ go through your crazy scheme instead of the guy you actually _want_ to your boyfriend.”

 

“I told you,” she said, a crestfallen expression making its way onto her face. “It’s _because_ my scheme is crazy that I don’t want to put Jaebum through it. The last thing I want to do is push him away with all this ridiculousness.”

 

Jinyoung was slightly impressed. All this time, he thought it was the biceps that had her entranced, but the profoundness of her disappointment made him think that maybe there was something more between Jisoo and Tank Top Boy, and the thought nettled him.

 

“Anyway,” he said. “I figured since you’ve got the job now, we can start talking about compensation.”

 

“It really is all about money with you, isn’t it?” Jisoo said. “Alright, fine. I’m being paid by the hour. The next event I’d need you for is the publication party in a week. That’s four hours, plus a little extra for your trouble, so I’ll pay you $100. Cash, so that there’s minimal paper trail. How’s that?”

 

“I want $500.”

 

Jisoo burst out laughing. “You’re out of your mind. Forget it.”

 

“Well, then, _you_ can forget it.”

 

“150,” she said firmly. Jinyoung clicked his tongue and shook his head.

 

“400.”

 

“I’m already agreeing to go to the gala with you tomorrow night.”

 

“350, then.” 

 

“200.”

 

“250, and it’s a deal.”

 

“200 is already more than generous,” Jisoo said, getting all up in his face. “And… I’ll buy you a present or something.”

 

“What kind of present?” Jinyoung said for argument’s sake.

 

“That’s for me to decide,” Jisoo said. “It’ll probably be a free Embrace subscription or something.”

 

Jinyoung laughed. “Alright, $200. It’s a deal. When?”

 

“Soon as I get on their payroll, so give it a week or two.” They sat in silence for a little while. Jinyoung finished up the water in his glass and then crossed his arms as he leaned back.

 

“Anyway,” he said, getting back down to business. “I also just wanted to remind you that tomorrow’s the gala.”

 

“I knew that,” Jisoo said.

 

“Here’s the plan: it’s at L’hotel Stella, which I think is in your direction, so I’ll pick you up. Be ready by 6:45. Remember, the dress code is formal, so dress appropriately. And text me your address.”

 

“You have to let me take pictures, too,” Jisoo said, suddenly remembering that it had been two weeks since there was any activity on the page. Julie Kiyoko would be wondering about the two of them when she started work on Monday. “I have to keep the profile updated.”

 

“Fine,” Jinyoung said. They settled into another silence and another plate of fries appeared at the bar from the kitchen. Jisoo swiped a couple to put in her mouth before excusing herself to return to her friends. Jinyoung nodded his goodbye. Jisoo had ordered a new round of drinks, too, so she was trying to balance the drinks and food on a tray and rebuffed his offer to help. Before she walked away, Jinyoung couldn’t help be admit that he was… looking forward to tomorrow night somewhat.

 

“Jisoo,” he called out before she could get too far. She stopped and turned, giving him an expectant look. Jinyoung hesitated, and then said in almost a whisper:

 

“You should curl your hair again tomorrow night. It looked nice like that.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to see Monsta X tonight. But I was very excited to write this chapter (which is lowkey kind of a filler chapter) just because I love Jaebum and wanted you all to get a little more of him, as well as Jisoo being crazy and thinking about Jinyoung's arms, so I decided to draft this before things got too crazy with pre-concert prep. Thank you all for your support, as always!


	12. Dear Mama

 

“There’s four trees that all have really beautiful fruit,” said Jisoo’s father over the phone. She was in the bathroom putting on makeup for the Scholars’ Gala when he’d suddenly called to catch up and tell her the latest peach farm news.

 

“But they were right up next to the diseased one and the foreman doesn’t know whether or not to we can sell them,” he said.

 

“Did you clear the diseased ones already?” Jisoo said, putting her phone on speaker and setting it down as she put on mascara. “What was it? Brown rot again?”

 

“Leaf curl, actually,” he said. 

 

“Hmm. Tricky.”

 

“You’d know what to do,” he said over the phone, laughing. “Well, I guess you’ll be home soon anyway, with graduation coming up? You excited to finally be back home?”

 

Jisoo put down the mascara wand and felt her heart pound away at her chest. She had been hoping to bring this subject up with him at a later time, but then she supposed that now was as good as ever. She closed her eyes and leaned against the sink for support.

 

“Actually, Appa,” she said, bringing her voice up an octave the way she did whenever she was going to ask him for anything. “I had something to tell you.”

 

He paused on the other line. “Is it bad news?”

 

“No, actually it’s good news!” Jisoo said, laughing a little. “Um. I got a job.”

 

He was quiet again. Jisoo got nervous. What was he thinking?

 

“I thought you already had a job,” he said, his voice sounding concerned. “An internship at a marketing firm, right? Getting some experience, prepping to take over for me.”

 

“Well, actually—I quit that job, Appa,” she said carefully. He sounded alarmed.

 

“What? Why?”

 

“I got a new job, though!” she said, trying to smooth things over. She picked up her phone and switched it off speaker. She held it to her ear.

 

“It pays really well, and my supervisor is really nice and so are my coworkers, and there’s even a chance for a promotion after a year—,”

 

“What job is this?” he asked. Jisoo bit the inside of her cheek.

 

“I’m an Editorial Assistant at this place—it’s a magazine, uh, a literary journal called Embrace,” she said. “You’ve heard of it, I read it all the time as a kid. Anyway, I’m helping them out with publishing and they’re even going to let me write a few short features—”

 

“Writing?”

 

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m… kind of an assistant writer for them.”

 

She heard her father sigh on the other line and her spirits fell. He was disappointed. Of course.

 

“Jisoo, I thought we talked about this already,” he said. “We had an agreement. We agreed you would get your business degree and then come home and run the family business with me. Writing? Sweetheart, you told me you didn’t even want to do that anymore.”

 

“I’m still getting my business degree—”

 

“Yeah, and then wasting it,” he said. He sighed again. She could hear how conflicted he was just by the sound of his breathing. Jisoo felt bad about making him feel this way. 

 

“Jisoo, I love you, you know that,” he said. “But being a writer isn’t a steady career. What if you never sell any books? What if the competition is too steep and no one takes notice of you? You’ll be unemployed.”

 

 _Please, just trust me_ , she thought to herself, but she held her tongue. _I can do this_. _Just believe in me_.

 

“Sweetheart, I just don’t want to see you get your heart broken if this doesn’t work out for you.”

 

She bit down on her lip and let out a long sigh. It was pointless, she saw.

 

“Anyway, I just need to tell you that I got a new job. And… I’m going to have it through the summer, so I can’t stay home too long.”

 

“Jisoo—”

 

Jisoo muttered a quick “I love you” and then ended the call. She heaved in a deep sigh and then groaned. She knew he meant well. He always did. 

 

Jisoo thought about her father, living alone back home on Kim’s Peaches and Plums. He was a kind man who never once hit her or raised his voice at her when she was growing up, but he was often out of touch with his daughter. When she told him of the bullying in elementary school, he told her that she just needed to be friendlier and the kids would warm up to her. He had a hard time letting Jisoo grow up. He never said it aloud, but Jisoo knew that he was heartbroken when she decided to go to college so far away from home. Her four years of undergrad were almost over, and she knew that he was expecting her to take her to come back home and take over the business.

 

It all started after her mother died, Jisoo supposed. He was crazy in love with her, and when she passed away, he held onto Jisoo tighter, his last connection to his late wife. 

 

The last thing she wanted was to break his heart even more. But Jisoo knew that if she never let herself try to reach her dream, if she gave up and just went back home to farm, she would regret it forever. She would always wonder if she could have done it. It hurt her that her father didn’t think she could.

 

Jisoo decided to shelve those thoughts for now. She had a mission, she thought to herself as she looked in the mirror. Her makeup was finished and she was already wearing her dress. But her hair was still as flat and lifeless as ever. She crouched down and grabbed the electric hair curler from a basket. As much as Jisoo didn’t want to give Jinyoung the satisfaction of thinking that she was curling her hair for him, she did agree that it looked nicer that way. So she shoved her pride down and began to heat up the curling iron. 

 

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and Jennie poked her head into the bathroom. 

 

“So, don’t panic,” she said. “But Jinyoung is dressed in a tux, and he’s waiting for you in our living room.”

 

Jisoo widened her eyes. “What?” she said. “It’s only 6:30! He’s early!”

 

“What should I tell him?”

 

Jisoo shrugged and despite Jennie’s warning, she did start panicking. “Uh, well, I guess you gotta tell him to wait,” Jisoo said. “I’m not ready yet!”

 

“Okay!”

 

Jinyoung sat in his tuxedo on the blue couch that the girls had in their apartment living room. It was easily the most luxurious-looking piece of furniture in the room, making him wonder how the girls had ended up with it. There was a smaller sofa opposite the blue one, but it was a simple black, faux-leather piece that could fold up into an arm chair. Jisoo’s three roommates sat there, staring at him.

 

“Good evening,” he said stiffly. 

 

“Hi,” said Jennie.

 

“Hello, there,” said Rose.

 

“What’s up?” said Lisa.

 

“So you and Jisoo are going to a fancy-schmancy event today?” asked Jennie. Jinyoung nodded.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “That is, if she gets ready in time.”

 

“She’s getting ready,” said Jennie. “She’s just in the bathroom, doing her hair or makeup or whatever. She’ll be out soon.”

 

“It takes a lot of work to look as good as she does,” Rose said, giggling.

 

“Here’s an idea,” Lisa said. “Do you want to wait in her room?”

 

Jinyoung was about to politely decline, but then he began to consider the offer. He hadn’t known Jisoo very well even back then but he was curious to see if his ideas about her matched up with reality. He pursed his lips and thought about it a while and then thought, to hell with it:

 

“Yeah, alright.”

 

He stood up and followed Lisa and Rose down the hall and they stopped by an open door with a small bundle of dried flowers taped to the center. Jinyoung peered inside.

 

Even if the girls hadn’t shown him right to the door, he probably would have guessed that this room was Jisoo’s. The minute he stepped through the door, he felt engulfed by her presence. On the far side of the wall, there was a _huge_ book case that sagged under the weight of at least 500 books, most of them romance novels or works of classic literature, which alone was a dead giveaway. 

 

The girls left him alone in the middle of the room, whispering to themselves. Jisoo had a queen-sized bed decked out in mauve sheets and a quilted cotton blanket. There was also a very worn out rabbit plushie resting on her pillow. Jinyoung picked it up and tested its softness by squishing it with his hand. Amused, he set it gently back down on its former perch. 

 

On her walls, an Eastern University pennant was tacked above the desk, but it was crooked so he reached up and straightened it. 

 

On her desk were stacks of novels and moleskine notebooks; textbooks with titles like “Advanced Macroeconomics” and “Business and the Law;” two scented candles—one smelled like peach bellini and the other was fresh linen. 

 

She had three photos in three small frames: one of herself and Jennie standing in what looked like an empty college dorm room with luggage bags; one of herself at high school graduation, smiling in her father’s arms; and one of herself as a child, sitting in the lap of a woman who must be her mother. 

 

He leaned in. Jisoo must have been about four or five in this photo. She is holding the same rabbit plush toy while her mother has a book open in her lap. The two are sitting on the grass. Behind them, peach trees are heavy with fruit and white sheets are hanging up to dry on a laundry line and blow in the wind.

 

Jinyoung suddenly realized he’d never known what Jisoo’s mom looked like. Judging from this photo, however, Jisoo must have inherited her looks from this woman. Except for a few extra pounds, she looked exactly like Jisoo did today.

 

Then he noticed another notebook that was open to a page in the middle. There was writing on it. Big, blocky, clumsy lettering, though, not the work of a twenty-two year old girl. Jinyoung wondered whose it was, until he happened to look at the page and saw that it was a diary, and it was opened to an entry from 2006. Jinyoung knew he shouldn’t have read it. But 2005 was two years before Jisoo had transferred to his middle school, and he couldn’t help it. He got curious. He started to flip through the pages.

 

Every entry began the same way:

 

_Dear Mama, a boy got scissors and cut my hair today._

 

_Dear Mama, I got hungry at lunch today. I couldn’t find my lunchbox. I think someone stole it._

 

_Dear Mama, I miss you._

 

Jinyoung remembered reading Jisoo’s old essay. She had written about her mother, who died of cancer years before they even met. He flipped forward a few months and continued reading. The more he read about Jisoo’s elementary school experience, the more enraged he became. He couldn’t believe ten-year-old children could be so senselessly cruel, and to a girl whose only crime was being born on a farm instead of in town.

 

_Dear Mama, a boy got my peach cup and spilled it on my head today. Now my hair is sticky._

 

_Dear Mama, Yuri told me today that she thinks I’m annoying. I thought we were friends._

 

_Dear Mama, I hate what the other kids call me._

 

_Dear Mama, I have good news! Appa said that I can change schools next year, and I’m really excited! But also nervous. It would be nice to have good friends for a change. I really want the kids to like me. No one knows me yet, so this is my chance to start over!_

 

Jinyoung’s heart sank reading that line. He flipped forward a couple more pages until he found the entry for the first day of school in 2007. 

 

_Dear Mama, a boy at my new school called me Kim Peachu again. Everyone laughed at me. It was my first day._

 

He was just about to turn the page and read on when a manicured hand reached over and stole the diary from right under his eye. He turned around and Jisoo was standing there, clutching the diary to her chest like a mother protecting her child from a potential snatcher. She was wearing a lilac dress with off-shoulder sleeves, and she had curled her hair again. Her expression was a cross between fury and terror.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Why are you in my room?”

 

Jinyoung choked on his words when he first tried to explain. He was flustered at having been caught snooping, which wasn’t his usual style.

 

“They told me I could wait in here,” he said. 

 

“So you decided to go through my stuff?” Jisoo said. She threw him a horrified expression and then hurriedly shut the notebook. She moved past him and slid it into an empty slot in a bookcase below her desk. Then, she looked back at him with slanted brows and a frown. Jinyoung, still feeling flustered, backed away until he was standing in the center of the room.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said wholeheartedly. “I hardly even read anything, I promise.”

 

It was a lie, and Jisoo knew it. She had seen him flip through the pages and the entries were short enough that anyone with a couple of minutes could get through a pretty good chunk of her story. Her cheeks were burning up with shame. She crossed her arms. No one was meant to read that journal. It was a sad account of some of the darker days of her life, days that she normally would rather not relive. She wanted to believe that she had come a long way since those days. 

 

“I needed it as reference for the script,” she said, still frowning and not sure why she felt the need to explain herself. Jinyoung was the one intruding in the first place. “Middle school was so long ago.”

 

Jinyoung thought about all the painful memories recorded in the diary. He wished he had known back then. If he’d known, he never would have called her by that nickname she hated. He liked to believe that he wasn’t the kind of person who would ever willingly hurt someone. It was just now dawning on him that what happened between them when they were twelve-years-old was all just a colossal misunderstanding. 


	13. Scholars' Gala

Jisoo happened to like formal dinners and fancy occasions, so she was actually looking forward to the gala even if she wasn’t looking forward to spending time with Jinyoung. L’hotel Stella was a five-star establishment, a posh hotel with a 1920’s art-deco concept. The ballroom had a dance floor and a live band. Several round tables were set with white lilies in the center. She wondered what exactly they were going to be doing, but Jinyoung was unresponsive for most of the evening.

 

Unlike Jisoo, who was texting her fake-boyfriend up ’til 3 in the morning making sure he knew the details of her carefully-laden plan for the Julie Kiyoko meeting, Jinyoung had no plan at all for the gala.

 

Jisoo had forgotten to ask him what version of the story they were sticking to: the one in her email, the one they’d improvised in the Embrace offices, or an entirely different one. 

 

She didn’t even know if she was supposed to be acting like his girlfriend or just some girl that he brought as his date. It was slightly annoying. 

 

It occurred to Jisoo that she never really understood exactly _why_ Jinyoung wanted her to come to this gala in the first place. In the three weeks since they’d agreed to this arrangement, she’d never thought to ask him. He didn’t strike her as the type of person to really care about what other’s thought. And, as he had been asking her for weeks now, she wondered why _her_ in particular.

 

They were passing through a hall to get to the ballroom when Jisoo surreptitiously looked him up and down. His scruff from the night before was gone, so he was clean shaven. His tux was neatly tailored to his measurements and he kept his hair lightly tousled so as not to overdo the formality of his look. Objectively, Jinyoung was handsome. In exactly the bring-him-home-to-meet-the-parents, do-gooder-type way that Lisa had said described before, and even without visual confirmation, she knew that he had the biceps to woo any girl he wanted.

 

So… why her? Why the stuck-up, bitter former high school rival who hated him?

 

Mostly, they ended up wandering around the ballroom, occasionally greeting his professors and he would just introduce her as his date. Once, Jisoo excused herself to the dessert table to try some chocolate truffles that were set out on a platter and drank several glasses of punch. She was downing her fourth cup and was heading back to where Jinyoung was standing when she noticed him staring into the crowd of people on the dance floor.

 

Unlike some of the frat parties and clubs that Jisoo had been to before, the gala was a classy affair and the band was playing lively, classy swing music, and the people danced in pairs. Actually, it was kind of a romantic scene. It reminded her of something she might read about in an old-timey novel. Her eyes especially zeroed in on a good-looking couple near the center of the floor.

 

The girl had sleek black hair and was wearing a sleek black dress, but her smile was bright, and she was staring lovingly into the eyes of a lean, handsome boy in a black tux with brown hair. He was spinning her and she was laughing, her eyes were sparkling. Then he leaned forward and kissed her nose. Jisoo smiled at the heartwarming scene in front of her.

 

When she reached Jinyoung he was still staring into the dancing crowd. 

 

“Do you want to dance?” Jisoo asked. She mentally slapped herself. She didn’t mean did he want to dance with _her_ , she meant to ask if he liked dancing in general, but she knew he would twist her words around. She braced herself to hear the saucy reply that she didn’t doubt was coming.

 

But he was silent. In fact, he didn’t seem to hear her at all. 

 

Jisoo looked at Jinyoung with a puzzled expression.

 

“Hey!” Jisoo said, raising her voice until Jinyoung snapped out of focus and then turned to her.

 

“What?” he asked. 

 

“I said, do you want to dan—I mean, do you like dancing?”

 

“Maybe later,” he said, and Jisoo was slightly amused that he still managed to misconstrue her meaning even after she changed the words. He suddenly looked nervous and rubbed the back of his neck.

 

“Let’s find our table,” Jinyoung said. He didn’t even look at Jisoo before turning to find their table. Jisoo scoffed and was about to follow him when those glasses of punch she drank suddenly hit her.

 

“I need to pee,” she said, grabbing his sleeve to keep him from leaving.

 

“What?” he said. Then Jisoo blushed, realizing she’d said that aloud.

 

“I mean, I need to use the bathroom.”

 

“Go, then,” Jinyoung said, nodding in the direction of the ladies’ room. “I’ll be at Table 10. They’re gonna serve dinner soon.”

 

Jisoo excused herself and began to push through the crowds on her way to the women’s restroom. The song ended and the dancing couples started to clap and cheer by the time Jisoo reached the door to the women’s room. It was in a narrow hallway and right across from the men’s room. 

 

She pushed the door and found her way to the toilets. After relieving her bladder in the bathroom stall, Jisoo sighed, remembering that her dress’ zipper was a challenge to do up. She made a mental reminder not to drink too much so she wouldn’t have to deal with the stupid thing twice. She sucked her stomach in and arched her back and began the long struggle with her dress’ zipper.

 

After a few minutes, she heard the bathroom door open. A pair of heels clicked on the marble floor, followed by another pair of frantic footsteps.

 

“Nawon! There you are!” said one of the girls. “Guess who’s here.”

 

Jisoo leaned against the side of the bathroom stall and continued battling the zipper. She cursed quietly to herself when the effort accidentally chipped the color on her thumbnail.

 

“Who?” said the other one of the girls on the other side of the stall.

 

“Your ex-boyfriend, Park Jinyoung!”

 

Jisoo froze. Jinyoung? Ex-boyfriend? She stopped dealing with her dress’ zipper for a minute and looked through the gaps in the bathroom stall. Her view was narrow, but if she positioned her head correctly, she could see the girls’ reflections in the mirror. 

 

It was her. The girl with the sleek black dress who was dancing. She had a heart-shaped face and her lips were stained red with lipstick. The sleek black dress she wore hugged her figure elegantly. 

 

“Are you serious?” the girl (Nawon, Jisoo assumed) said. “Oh, god, that’s so awkward.”

 

Jisoo sucked in a breath. So _that’s_ who Jinyoung had been staring at. It suddenly made sense. The other girl, who was wearing a floor-length red gown, nodded as she refreshed her lip-gloss.

 

“I haven’t even got to the weirdest part yet,” said Red Dress. “He brought a _date_.”

 

 _Oh_ , Jisoo thought. _She means me_. What dramatic irony, Jisoo thought, being hidden in a bathroom stall with a stubborn zipper while two girls gossiped about her and her date on the other side. She tried to keep quiet.

 

“Why should I be interested?” Nawon said, staring at her reflection intently as if to keep from showing emotion. Red Dress crossed her arms.

 

“I was watching him interact with her,” she said. “She’s pretty, but _zero_ chemistry, at least from my perspective. You two made a much cuter couple.”

 

Jisoo saw Nawon roll her eyes. “Mark is my boyfriend now, Jiyeon,” she said.

 

“Sure but don’t pretend you never had any feelings for Jinyoung or that you’re not mourning the end of that relationship,” the other girl, Jiyeon, said. “You really liked him, you said that you never would’ve cheated on him if it weren’t for that eight-week training program he went on.”

 

Nawon tossed her lip-gloss into her clutch and faced Jiyeon. She really did have a killer figure, Jisoo noticed. It suddenly occurred to her that if Jinyoung had dated this girl once, he must have really liked the way she looked in figure-hugging dresses. The thought made her blush, though not out of modesty. 

 

“It wasn’t just the eight-week program,” Nawon said, her voice becoming stern. “He was a distracted guy. He was a nice guy, but he only cared about work and school, I felt like I had to fight just to be a part of his life. I know it’s his dream to be a doctor and all, but I have needs, too! And Mark was there meeting those needs when he wasn’t.”

 

Jisoo’s eyes widened hearing their conversation. There were so many things to be shocked about in just the span of a few seconds. One, Jinyoung had a girlfriend and two, she cheated on him with some boy named Mark because Jinyoung “wasn’t meeting her needs,” whatever that meant. 

 

“What does that mean?” asked Jiyeon.

 

“I mean, he’d spend literally all day at that hospital and not get off until evening,” Nawon said, crossing her arms. “And then I’d ask him to get dinner with me and he’d just be distracted the whole time. He’d just talk about what he did at work or what he learned on his program. I was starting to get tired of it. And he was so busy, for two whole months, we didn’t have sex.”

 

 _Don’t picture them having sex_ , Jisoo snapped at herself.

 

“I would just wait at his apartment for him to get home and feel stupid and alone,” Nawon said, her voice slowing down. “But Mark was there. We would talk, and then one day, I just kissed him. And then it got out of hand.”

 

“Oh, shit,” said Jiyeon.

 

“I told myself it was just going to be that one time, but I kept going back,” Nawon continued. “Then, Jinyoung went home for a funeral or something, and I went to his apartment to see Mark. But then Jinyoung came home early and caught us. Anyway, that’s why he’s now avoiding me.” 

 

“Know what I think?” said Jiyeon. “That girl must be like his cousin or something, and he only brought her to make you jealous.”

 

Nawon scoffed. “Poor guy,” she said. "He's still wearing those shoes I bought him, too."

 

Jisoo heard the girls push the door open and leave the bathroom. Once she was sure they were gone, she gave her zipper one final tug and it finally zipped into place. Jisoo walked over to the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.

 

Jisoo had listened carefully to everything Nawon had said. She had talked about how Jinyoung had made her feel abandoned while he was doing a training program. Nawon’s voice was soft, but somehow Jisoo couldn’t bring herself to feel any sympathy for this girl. Yes, Jisoo didn’t know the whole story, but even if she _could_ trust this girl’s version of the events, Jisoo still couldn’t take her side. 

 

All she could think about was Jinyoung, going through what was surely an intense, stressful eight-weeks of training and then going home to attend his favorite teacher’s funeral, and being unable to count on his girlfriend’s support. And then coming home and finding her carrying on with someone else. 

 

Maybe Jisoo had never had a boyfriend or ever really dated much at all, but she didn’t need years of romantic experience to know that you simply didn’t do that to someone you loved. She ran her fingers under the stream of warm water that automatically gushed out when she waved her hands under the faucet. She dried her hands and then looked back at herself.

 

Did he really bring her out here just to make his ex-girlfriend jealous? Did he just want to make her regret what she did to him? Was he really just using her as a pawn in a mind game between him and a former lover? 

 

Jisoo didn’t know why she felt so embarrassed. After all, it wasn’t as if she wasn’t also using Jinyoung for her own selfish purposes. 

 

She looked closely at her curls. They were starting to straighten out from the weight of her hair. Not enough mouse, she thought to herself. She checked her dress zipper one more time to be sure and then decided she’d spent enough time in the bathroom. They’d be serving dinner soon. Jisoo walked over to the door and pushed it open a little too violently, since it accidentally hit a young man who was just coming out of the men’s room.

 

“Oh, god, I am so sorry!” Jisoo said, gasping and covering her stunned mouth with her hands. But the man she’d hit with the door was tall and was built was a boulder. She doubted he even felt it. He flashed her a toothy, boyish, flirtatious grin.

 

“Don’t even worry about it,” he said.

 

“I should’ve been more careful,” Jisoo said, bowing apologetically. “That was my fault.”

 

“Seriously, I’m alright,” he said, straightening out his tuxedo jacket. “Sorry I scared you there. You alright?”

 

“Uh, yeah, I’m okay, I think,” Jisoo said, laughing nervously. “Well, if you’re alright, then, I guess I’ll just go to my table.”

 

Jisoo nodded as she excused herself and walked down the hallway. But she barely took two steps when the boy reached out and grabbed her elbow.

 

“Wait,” he said, his friendly voice switching tones. His eyes narrowed at her. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

 

Jisoo gave him a puzzled look. She looked him up and down. A complete stranger

 

“I don’t think so,” she said. He crinkled his brows even more, focusing on her face.

 

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I’ve seen you somewhere before. I know your face.”

 

“Well, I don’t know yours,” she snapped, getting annoyed by this exchange. She was about to tug her arm out of his grip, but then he tightened it. 

 

“Kim Jisoo,” he said. Jisoo froze. How did he know her?

 

“Who are you?” Jisoo demanded. 

 

“Wow, you don’t even remember me,” he said, scoffing and still not letting go of her arm. “That is real cold-blooded of you, but I guess I should have figured.”

 

Jisoo was beyond confused and a little bit nervous. She looked him up and down, taking in his swollen, chiseled physique, his square jaw, his dark eyes and thick hair. He was… handsome, she guess, but he was a bit of a—

 

Meathead.

 

Jisoo’s blood ran cold. The Tinder creep.

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” she gasped, finally summoning enough strength to take her arm out of his grip. “This isn’t happening.”

 

“I thought it was just your messaging etiquette that sucked, but I guess you’re a cold-hearted _bitch_ in person, too,” he said, spitting the words out at her like they were spears and she was a practice target. Jisoo opened her mouth to speak, but she was so stunned she couldn’t say anything. He was giving her such a vicious stare; she shrunk under his eyes.

 

“Jisoo!” said a voice that was approaching from behind. She felt Jinyoung put a hand on her shoulder. 

 

“Where have you been? They’re starting the awards now,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo didn’t answer, she couldn’t tear her frightened gaze away from the tall, muscular man standing in front of them.

 

“I’ve got news for you about your girlfriend, buddy,” said Tinder creep to Jinyoung with a hateful tone. “She’s a _sick cheat_ , that’s what she is.”

 

Jinyoung was simultaneously confused and shocked at the turn this conversation had taken. He didn’t even know who this guy was. 

 

“What’s going on here?” Jinyoung asked. “Jisoo, do you know this guy?”

 

Jisoo turned to Jinyoung and stammered: “I—I honestly don’t—at least not personally, I just—”

 

“She’s a _sick_ , _lying_ , _cheating_ , _dirty_ _slut_ , that’s what she is!” Tinder creep screamed and Jisoo startled backwards, her shoulder hitting Jinyoung’s chest. She was so stunned by his hate-filled words that she couldn’t speak. Jinyoung was equally appalled at the man’s language, and shocked that someone could hate Jisoo that much. They weren’t exactly friends, either, but Jinyoung would never scream “dirty slut” in her face. He would never do it behind her back, either. He would never even _think_ it.

 

Jinyoung felt her tremble. He took her hand and started to lead her away.

 

“Let’s just go,” he said. Jisoo nodded dizzily, still shaken up by the sheer, raw malice in the man’s voice. She turned to follow Jinyoung, but Tinder creep walked behind them. Jisoo heard his footsteps catching up to her and Jinyoung, and she felt uneasy. Jinyoung was walking a little ahead of her, leading her back to the tables by the hand. But when he heard Tinder creep’s footsteps getting closer to them, he pulled Jisoo so that she was walking ahead of him and then turned around.

 

“Look, I don’t who you are or what your problem is,” Jinyoung said evenly and calmly to the much bigger and much strong man. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but you need to—”

 

“I bet you didn’t even know she had a Tinder profile,” the guy said, scoffing.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jinyoung said.

 

“Exactly my point,” Tinder creep said. “Your little _bitch_ is going behind your back, sending messages at me and shit and then blocking people just for being nice.”

 

“You sent me an unsolicited picture of your penis!” Jisoo said, momentarily finding her gumption. Tinder creep flipped his middle finger up at her.

 

“Shut up, you _whore_ ,” he shouted. He lunged at her, but not before Jinyoung could shove him back.

 

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Jinyoung said sternly. His voice was still smooth and even but it had a slight edge this time. Jisoo still had no idea why he was so angry at her just for blocking him after _he_ sexually harassed _her_ in a messaging app. Tinder creep just scoffed.

 

“Talk to her like what?” he said, pushing closer to Jinyoung’s face with a scowl. “You mean like she’s the _slut_ she is?”

 

Jinyoung shoved him back again. This time, hard enough that Tinder creep back into a waiter holding a tray of wine glasses and the edge of a table. People were staring at them now, and Tinder creep had an even more vicious scowl on his face. Jisoo covered her shocked mouth with her palm. She was suddenly afraid for Jinyoung. Tinder guy was obviously much bigger and stronger than him. If they fought, he’d lose. 

 

“I said,” Jinyoung clenched his fist. “ _Don’t talk to her like that_.”

 

Jisoo took Jinyoung by the arm and tried to drag him away.

 

“Just leave it alone,” she tried to say calmly. “Let’s just go.”

 

Jinyoung cast one last glare at the floored man, and then turned to follow Jisoo back to their table. But then there was a sharp, fast pain in his back as Tinder creep rammed into him from behind and tackled him to the ground. He jumped on Jinyoung and punched the side of his face. Everyone dropped their dinner forks and gasped aloud. At Table 24, Nawon and Mark jumped up from their seats and craned their necks trying to see what happened. They stood to see what had caused the row. The speaker stopped mid-speech and called for security. Jisoo stepped back, completely shocked at this turn of events. 

 

“Jinyoung!” Jisoo screamed, heart pounding. “Get off him! Stop it! Someone, _help_!”

 

 

 

 

 

The kerfuffle was stopped before any real damage could be done. The biggest casualties were some glassware from tables that the boys had rammed into. Hotel security was on the screen before either Jinyoung or Tinder boy could seriously hurt each other. Jisoo was relieved that it was over so soon, but she was sorry that the fight had ended in the three of them being escorted out of the event.

 

Now, she was pacing the floor in a Hotel Security office while Jinyoung sat in a chair, handcuffed to a desk. The officer they’d been talking to had taken a statement from the both of them and then left to get a statement from Tinder creep, who was handcuffed to a desk in a different office.

 

A bellhop came by and handed Jisoo the frozen water bottle she had asked for ten minutes ago. She scooted another chair closer to Jinyoung and saw down next to him.

 

He hadn’t said a single word to her since they were escorted out. She didn’t know what he was thinking, but she guessed he was probably feeling embarrassed. He’d caused a scene at the Scholars’ Gala after all. 

 

The bruise on his left cheekbone was the same shade of purple as her dress.

 

“Hey, look, we match now,” she said, pointing to her dress and smiling nervously. Jinyoung turned slowly and gave her an unamused side-eye glare. Jisoo dropped the smiled and cleared her throat. She started to gently press the frozen water bottle against his cheek, but he moved his head away from her.

 

“What are you doing?” he said in a low voice. Jisoo was annoyed at his tone.

 

“I’m icing your bruise,” she said and then pressed the ice against his face again. He winced. “It’s to stop the swelling. You’re a future doctor, you should already know that.”

 

Jinyoung was going to tell Jisoo that she should wrap the ice in a cloth before pressing it to a wound to keep from damaging the skin, and that she was pressing it to entirely the wrong part of his face, anyway. But when he looked at her face, her eyes looked glassy and tired. 

 

He still couldn’t believe he’d gotten into a fight in the middle of the Scholars’ Gala. All his professors were there, they saw him. All his classmates saw him. _Nawon_ saw him. Under normal circumstances, Jinyoung didn’t believe in using violence to resolve issues, but he couldn’t just do nothing while that deranged asshole came after Jisoo. He had to defend her. God knew she’d endured enough name-calling for one lifetime.

 

“You should have just told me,” Jinyoung said after a long bout of silence. Jisoo took the ice away from his face and gave him a quizzical look.

 

“What? About my Tinder profile?” she said, scoffing. “Yeah. I have one. Big deal, lots of girls are on it. I’m pretty sure that’s how Jennie and Jackson met, although she—”

 

“No,” Jinyoung said. “I meant you should have just told me back then that you didn’t like being called Kim Peachu. You should have just told me about the kids at your old school. I wouldn’t have said any of those things if I knew they hurt you.”

 

Jisoo was slightly dazed by this twist in the conversation. She gaped at him for a minute, remembering that she’d caught him reading his old diary. Her first reflex was to get angry, but she fought those feelings back. She hated bringing up that sad time in her life, she hated admitting that she was ever the victim of school bullying, hated admitting that she had been weak.

 

But she kept looking at Jinyoung’s bruise, kept thinking about that moment when Jinyoung first shoved Tinder guy back against the table, aggressively defending her honor. The words “thank you” were rolling around on her tongue, but her stubborn pride wouldn’t allow her to let the words out, even though she wanted to say them. Jisoo pursed her lips and tore her gaze from him, feeling ashamed of her own stubbornness.

 

Jinyoung sighed and leaned his head back. He figured she wouldn’t be able to admit she was wrong about some things. He should have known that Jisoo was too—

 

“I could have just told you,” she said softly, breaking the silence. “I should have just told you.”

 

Jinyoung looked at her and he had a startled expression on his face. She was biting on her lip and staring at something on the floor. If he didn’t know Jisoo as well as he did, he would have scoffed at her words and think nothing of them. But because he knew how stubborn and proud and ultimately insecure she really was, he understood exactly how much of her spirit she had to let go of in order to let herself admit that he was right. 

 

He understood that this was actually her strange way of saying “thank you.” One corner of his face curled into a smile that Jisoo didn’t see. He felt a little bit of the weight of their ten-year rivalry lifting and floating away. 

 

"So," he said, smirking. "You really know what that guy's penis looks like?"

 

She pushed the frozen water bottle to his bruise again, making him flinch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the Monsta X concert was amazing! I love Shownu and Hyungwon <3 Okay, anyway, another double update, but actually these two chapters used to be one big one that I just split in half because it was too long. Thank you all for the extremely thoughtful comments, I really appreciate it!


	14. Telling the Truth

It had been about a month and a half since Jisoo’s first interview for Embrace, and she was about a week and a half into her new position as an editorial assistant. At first, Jisoo thought she would be working mostly with Julie Kiyoko the managing editor, but Jisoo found herself mostly reporting to the associate managing editor, Sandara Park, whom everyone referred to simply as Dara.

 

She was a thin, wispy girl who was actually quite pretty and had a solid taste for fashion, but she struck Jisoo as a no-nonsense kind of person. She was younger than Julie and really only a little bit older than Jisoo. She was constantly stressed and tense and was constantly asking her staff for some piece of paper or another. Jisoo’s work station was on the far left side of a long table right outside Dara’s office. 

 

“Hey, Jaesu,” Dara said, strolling out of the office and stopping in front of Jisoo’s work station.

 

“Oh, actually, my name is Jis—”

 

“Whatever,” Dara said. She closed her eyes and began massaging her temples. “So, I know this is like your first day or whatever, but just to let you know, we’re kind of in the middle of crunch time.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said. “Can I help with anything?”

 

“I told Julie I wanted the lit major who got published in Thread, but I guess you’ll have to do,” Dara said and Jisoo shrank in her seat. “Anyway, I know you’re still in training, but I seriously need some help with some stuff.”

 

“Lay it on me.”

 

“Okay, well first off,” Dara said, putting her hands on her hips and starting to run through a list of tasks in a rapid-fire voice. “I need you to call the printer’s office and tell them we need 1,500 more copies of the winter issue, 2500 copies of the fall issue, and put in an order for 3500 more copies of the upcoming spring issue, and make _sure_ he got my email for the pamphlet, and I want those before this weekend for the lit fair uptown.”

 

Jisoo grabbed a notepad and started scribbling all of this down. Dara didn’t pause between tasks.

 

“I also forwarded you an email from one of our writers, she’s having an issue accessing her online account, walk her through it,” Dara said. “We also have a new round of manuscripts coming today because four of our writers dropped. Go through them, read them, find four good ones, and send them my way. Don’t even think about sending me shitty manuscripts.”

 

“Uh, okay,” Jisoo said, still scribbling in a hurry. “Anything else?”

 

“Yes,” Dara said. “There’s a redesign meeting next week, but I’ll be at the lit fair, ask Seungri if you can sit in on it and take notes for me. Also, I’ll need you to sit in on a meeting with me later today with Julie, we need to discuss ideas for the short feature. She wants your input for some reason.”

 

Jisoo perked up a little at that news. Had Julie asked for her specifically? Dara paused to catch her breath and clenched and unclenched her fists. She looked at her assistant and seemed to read her thoughts. She scoffed.

 

“Don’t get too hopeful,” Dara said. “Editorial assistants don’t write short features, so you’re better off just forgetting about that. Julie always just lets new girls sit in to make them feel included.”

 

Jisoo’s smile faded, and she packed down her ballooning sense of optimism as Dara said. Her supervisor cleared her throat.

 

“Anyway, you’re clear on your tasks?”

 

Jisoo nodded.

 

“Good,” Dara said. “One more thing. Don’t forget about the publication party this weekend. It’ll be your first staff party, right?”

 

“That’s right,” Jisoo said subordinately. 

 

“Then you’d better make it and bring your boyfriend. Or girlfriend,” Dara said. “It’s kind of a company tradition, getting to know you and your story and your significant other. Everything is about love at Embrace.”

 

Dara said that last line with a slightly sarcastic tone and then chuckled to herself.

 

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Dara said. “And if you find yourself on Amazon, buy me a stress ball.”

 

“Will do,” Jisoo called out cheerfully. Once Dara was back in her office, Jisoo looked down at the notepad with her tasks on it and she let out a long sigh. The sheer number of jobs she had to do was starting to give her anxiety, so she put the notepad face down on her desk for a minute and took a few deep breaths, trying to remember that this was the job she wanted. She cleared her desk off and was about to start on her first task—calling the printers—when she realized she didn’t know which printing company Dara meant, never mind their phone number.

 

Okay, save that one for later. Move on to the next one: an email from a writer having trouble with his or her account, and Jisoo had to help them figure it out.

 

But then she realized that she was so new that even _she_ didn’t have an online Embrace portal account yet. She’d need some time to figure that out herself before she could guide someone else.

 

Okay, next one: read the manuscripts and choose four, but the mail hadn’t been brought in yet, so there were no manuscripts to read.

 

Ask Seungri for permission to sit in on the redesign meeting. But who is Seungri and where is his office?

 

Shit. There wasn’t a single task she actually knew how to do. Jisoo started fidgeting in her seat. She looked over at Dara in her office, but she looked like she was busy talking to someone on the phone. No one else in the office looked particularly inclined to offer any help either. In the middle of this crisis, Jisoo realized she had another problem:

 

Jinyoung wasn’t answering any of her calls or texts, and she hadn’t so much as spoken to him in a week and a half. The Spring issue publication party was _this_ weekend. She decided to put aside the tasks for now and grab her phone. She started texting another message to him, the 18th one she had sent him in ten days.

 

“Hello?!” she typed. “Publication party this weekend!!! We need to meet up before then!!! Where are you?” 

 

She sent the text and immediately tried calling him. The call went straight to his inbox. Jisoo hung up and started panicking.

 

Why wasn’t he answering her calls or texts? Why was he avoiding her? Why wasn’t he talking to her? Did she do something wrong? Was he mad at her? But why? Because he got beat up by Tinder boy at the gala? That wasn’t her fault, though! And anyway, he was the one who shoved that guy first. 

 

What if he really did decide he was going to sabotage her and chose today of all days to screw her over. Would he do that? He wouldn’t. Right?

 

The uncertainty was killing her. With only two more days until the weekend, Jisoo didn’t have much time to get in touch with Jinyoung to touch base before they pretended to be boyfriend and girlfriend at the company event. She had to do _something_ fast. 

 

 

 

 

 

“I need Jackson’s phone number.” Jisoo barged into Jennie’s room straight after work and found her friend cycling in the corner of her bedroom. Jennie looked up from a tablet she had balanced on the handrails and gave Jisoo a puzzled expression.

 

“Why?” Jennie said, sitting up on the stationary bike. Jisoo clenched her fists and started rocking on her heels.

 

“I just need it,” Jisoo said. Jennie still had an unamused, unconvinced look on her face.

 

“You just… need my boyfriend’s phone number?” she said. Jisoo’s voice was frantic. She really just wanted to be in and out of the room without having to tell Jennie that it was because she needed to get a hold of Jinyoung, but this wasn’t working.

 

“Not to talk to him!” Jisoo said. “It’s just… Ugh! Jinyoung hasn’t been answering my calls, and I need to know where he is.”

 

The look of shock on Jennie’s face was worrying Jisoo. She pressed her lips together and waited for Jennie to say something. She got off the bike and wiped her neck with a towel.

 

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Jennie said, sitting down on her bed. “Is… Jinyoung your… boyfriend?”

 

Jisoo was afraid she was going to ask that. She stammered out a non-reply:

 

“Mmm—Yea—No—I mean, kind of— it’s kind of complicated. Because—Yes, but not really?”

 

Jennie cocked one eyebrow. “So which is it?” she asked. Jisoo scrambled for some kind of reply that would explain everything without revealing too much, but in the end she just let out one long, exasperated sigh. Damn it all, she thought.

 

“Okay, fine!” Jisoo said, shutting her eyes. “I’m just going to tell you because you’re my best friend and you deserve to know and knowing you, you’re going to wrench this out of me soon anyway, so I might as well just say it.”

 

Jisoo told Jennie everything: the interview, the lunch meet-up, Jinyoung crashing into her when she confronted him on his campus, the carnival date, meeting Julie Kiyoko, even running into Tinder creep at the gala and getting Jinyoung handcuffed in a basement security office. Jennie listened wordlessly and with a blank look of focus. When Jisoo was done explaining everything, Jennie nodded slowly and then said:

 

“So he’s your…,” she said, her voice low. “… _fake_ boyfriend?”

 

Jisoo nodded and then sighed. “Yeah. Essentially.”

 

Jennie looked taken aback. “And he’s _okay_ with that?”

 

“We have an agreement,” Jisoo said. “And part of that agreement was coming with me to this event at Embrace, but he’s not keeping up his part of the bargain because he won’t answer my calls and, anyway, that’s _why_ I need Jackson’s number. He’ll know where Jinyoung is.”

 

“I don’t get it,” Jennie said. “Why wouldn’t you just ask him out on a real date?”

 

“Because it’s not like that!” Jisoo said, turning defensive all of a sudden. “I don’t have feelings for him.”

 

Jennie cocked a brow: “Really?”

 

Jisoo rubbed her face in exasperation.

 

“Don’t do this to me, Jennie,” she said. “I’m already going through a major crisis. Did I tell you that my new boss gave me three things to do and I couldn’t do a single one of them? The look she gave me when I told her I wasn’t done was—“

 

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

 

Jisoo looked at her with a confused look. “What?”

 

“This whole fake relationship thing,” Jennie said, her voice soft.

 

“Why?” Jisoo asked.

 

“Because what if you do end up falling for him, but for him, this is all just a business deal? You’ll be crushed,” Jennie said. The look of genuine concern on her best friend’s face touched Jisoo, but she was also slightly shocked that Jennie didn’t think she had the situation under control.

 

“I told you, it’s not like that between us,” Jisoo said. “It _is_ all just a business deal, I’m _not_ going to fall for Jinyoung. That was why I picked him in the first place. This was all purely so that I could get this job at Embrace, this will all be over when I find a real boyfriend, anyway.”

 

The look Jennie gave her made Jisoo feel vulnerable like she was see-through. Jisoo stood her guard and tried to look confident. In the end, Jennie shrugged.

 

“Okay,” Jennie said, relenting. “Just… be careful, Jisoo.”

 

Jisoo nodded. “I am.”

 

“I’ll text you Jackson’s number,” Jennie said, grabbing her phone and scrolling through her contacts. “But don’t even _think_ about sending him sexy pictures in the middle of the night.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. “Darn,” she said. “You uncovered my secret plan.”

 

 

 

 

 

The library. Jinyoung was the goddamn Southern Tech university research library this entire time. For all his moody silence, Jisoo had been sure Jinyoung must have been dead in a ditch somewhere or had fallen into the river and drowned. 

 

Jisoo groaned as she exited the station and started marching toward the SoTech campus, rehearsing the speech she was going to give him once she found him. The SoTech campus was bigger than Jisoo’s university, so she had to walk for ten minutes before she even caught sight of the big gray building that was the university library. 

 

There were students coming in and out of the library through four sets of glass doors. There were three floors and she prepared herself to search every one of them until she found Jinyoung and gave him and piece of her mind. She was taking the stairs two and at the time and marching straight toward the doors when she suddenly crashed into a girl who was walking out.

 

The sheer force of the crash made Jisoo’s whole body shake and made the other girl drop all her books and fall backward. Jisoo gasped.

 

“ _Shit_ , I am _so_ _sorry_!” Jisoo said, kneeling to the ground to help the girl pick her books up again.

 

“That was a total accident!” Jisoo said, handing the books back to her. 

 

“It’s okay,” the girl said, stacking her books and papers back together before picking them up. “It’s midterm week, everyone is a little out of it.”

 

Jisoo laughed nervously as she handed her another book and then helped her stand again. The girl was wearing a blue knit sweater and she dusted some gravel off her jeans.

 

“Are you okay?” Jisoo asked. When the girl looked up, Jisoo realized that she was Nawon. Jinyoung’s ex-girlfriend. Jisoo recognized her face from the minute she spent staring at her reflection in a bathroom mirror. Nawon assured her again that she was fine. Jisoo, certain that she hadn’t been recognized, was about to turn and leave when Nawon said:

 

“Hey. You’re Jinyoung’s date from the gala, aren’t you?”

 

Jisoo froze. Nawon looked closely at Jisoo’s face until a little light bulb flashed on in her head. She was amused.

 

“It _is_ you,” Nawon said. “I thought I recognized you. Oh, sorry. I’m—”

 

“Nawon, Jisoo said, cutting her off. “I know who you are.”

 

Nawon raised her brows and then laughed nervously. Jisoo’s feelings of embarrassment and anger from the bathroom conversation returned to her all at once. As sweet and friendly as Nawon looked, Jisoo burned with deep-buried prejudice against her. Nawon smiled.

 

“I guess that means he told you about me, then,” she said, sighing. Nawon was trying to be buddy-buddy with her, but Jisoo withheld all sisterly affection from her voice.

 

“I also know what happened between you two,” Jisoo said.

 

Nawon stared at her and clicked her tongue in disappointment.

 

“I figured he hadn’t forgiven me yet,” she said. Jisoo narrowed her eyes at Nawon.

 

“Do you think you deserve it?” she asked. When Nawon looked at her, Jisoo could tell that she wasn’t trying to be friendly anymore. Her glare was sharp and menacing.

 

“Look, I don’t know what Jinyoung told you about me, but whatever it is, it’s not the whole story,” Nawon said.

 

Jisoo scoffed hearing her say that. 

 

“You should hear my side, too,” Nawon said, standing up straighter. “Listen, girl-to-girl, let me tell you something about Jinyoung.”

 

Jisoo doubted that Nawon had anything to say about Jinyoung that would interest her. But Nawon ignored her eye-roll and pressed on.

 

“He’s a great guy and he’s cute and all,” Nawon said smugly. “But when you’re dating him, you’re going to have to be fine settling for second place in his life. Ultimately, all he cares about is his own goals and his own principles.”

 

“It’s not as if you thought he was all that important to you, either, though. Right?” Jisoo snapped. Nawon’s cheeks flushed with anger.

 

“You can judge me all you want, but I’m not sorry,” Nawon said in a low voice. “You don’t know what it was like. Feeling so left behind while he was off doing _whatever_.”

 

“You mean while he was out working and studying and going after his dream and mourning the death of a loved one while his girlfriend was screwing his roommate and _not_ supporting him?”

 

Jisoo had stepped closer to Nawon without even realizing it. Her brows creased with ire at Nawon, who took a step back away from her.

 

“Don’t act so high and mighty,” Nawon said. “I supported him in everything he wanted.”

 

“You didn’t, though,” Jisoo growled. “You betrayed his trust and broke his heart.”

 

“Maybe I did, but I what’s done is done,” Nawon said. “My happiness is important, too. Jinyoung wasn’t meeting my needs and—”

 

“You weren’t meeting his, either, but he managed to not cheat on you, so don’t you dare try to pin responsibility for all this bad blood on him!”

 

Jisoo was raising her voice now and getting closer to Nawon’s face. The other girl took another careful step back. Jisoo’s blood turned hot and rushed through her the angrier she became. It frightened her, how angry she was getting. She’d never felt fury like this before. She tried to steady her pounding heart and control her breathing.

 

No matter how much she hated Jinyoung before, he didn’t deserve this. If he could take a punch to defend her against someone who’d want to hurt her, then she could do the same for him. A quid pro quo, right?

 

“You were his girlfriend,” Jisoo said in a low voice. “You were supposed to love him. You were supposed to make him feel free to go after his dreams and not make him feel caged or trapped or burdened. You were supposed to _be there_ for him, _Nawon_.”

 

Jisoo spat her name out like it was sour milk, and the wide-eyed look of fear on the other girl’s face was enough to satisfy her. But then she realized that Nawon wasn’t looking at her, but at someone a little bit behind her. When Jisoo turned, Jinyoung was standing there.

 

Her face suddenly burned with embarrassment. How long had he been standing there? How much did he hear?

 

Jinyoung’s face had light scruff on it again. His hair was tousled and his eyes looked tired as they switched their gaze from Jisoo to Nawon and then back. They rested on Nawon a little longer, and then without another word, he side-stepped both of them and quietly descended the stairs. Just as he was passing Nawon, she reached out and grabbed his sleeve. He stopped in his tracks, and Jisoo tensed at the contact.

 

“Jinyoung, wait!” Nawon said, her voice desperate. “It’s been long enough, don’t you think?”

 

What was she talking about? Jisoo thought. 

 

“Just because I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore doesn’t mean I want to be your enemy,” Nawon said, staring at the side of his face and willing him to look at her. But Jinyoung kept his eyes forward.

 

“You know I never meant to hurt you,” she whispered. Jinyoung’s jaw tensed.

 

“You did anyway, though,” he said. “So I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

 

This was not what he was planning to run into when he wrapped up his library study session. After Nawon cheated on him, he was planning to never see or speak to her ever again. He wasn’t a very confrontational kind of person, especially when it came to these things. Even if he did have questions, even if he did want to know why she did it, even if he didn’t want to know how long she’d been unfaithful, he couldn’t bring himself to face Nawon. Although, now that Jisoo had gotten those answer out of her, he supposed he no longer had to.

 

Nawon let go of his sleeve and she was choking back tears. Funny, he thought. A few months ago, that would have been his undoing. But now, watching her choke back tears, he felt nothing. No remorse, no more bleeding hearts, no more pity. 

 

“Can’t we at least be friends?” Nawon asked.

 

The look in Jinyoung’s eyes was the darkest expression Nawon had ever seen on him, but Jisoo’s stomach flipped when she realized she’d seen that look before. Years ago, in high school. Except back then, those dark eyes were staring at her. Her and Song Mino. 

 

“You cheated on me,” Jinyoung said slowly. “You made me feel like a shitty boyfriend when I was just doing my job and prioritizing things that were important to me, as if I had any control over my own hours, as if my dreams didn’t matter to you, as if I wasn’t also having a hard time. And while I was worrying about you, you were screwing my roommate, and now you want me to just absolve you of your guilt?”

 

Jinyoung scoffed and Nawon’s eyes grew even wider with shock.

 

“The answer is no,” Jinyoung said flatly. Jisoo let out a slow breath.

 

“But why?” Nawon asked.

 

“Because that would feel too much like forgiveness,” Jinyoung said. “And you aren’t sorry. Go to hell, Nawon.” 

 

He started to walk away, leaving Nawon in the dust to choke on her unshed tears. Jisoo watched his retreating figure for a long while before remembering that she actually had something to say to him. She scrambled down the stairs and across the grassy knoll after him.

 

“Jinyoung! Wait!” Jisoo said, catching up with him. He didn’t turn to her as he spoke.

 

“What are you doing here?” he said. “Aside from sticking your nose in my business.”

 

He wasn’t really angry at Jisoo. He couldn’t be angry with her after what she said back there, but he was still seething from his encounter with Nawon, and the feelings probably wouldn’t let him go for a while. Jisoo had to run to keep up with his power walk. She was slightly out of breath when she shouted:

 

“I’m sorry!”

 

“For yelling at my ex-girlfriend or for blowing up my phone with fifty-million messages?” he asked. 

 

Jisoo slowed as she choked back a sob of her own.

 

“I’m sorry I stole your test.”

 

Jinyoung stopped dead in his tracks. Jisoo’s heart clenched. 

 

That was not what she had meant to say. It just came out, and she couldn’t put it back in. Jinyoung stared at her with a tense, blank stare that she couldn’t read. Inside her, Jisoo’s aching heart battled her stubborn, proud spirit for the right to let her speak honestly. Jinyoung didn’t say anything. He kept staring at her like she was a ghost. Jisoo felt tears stinging her eyes as her proud spirit lost its battle. Everything she felt that fateful day in high school came flooding back into her.

 

“I stole your test,” she said again with shaky breath. “And—I’m sorry.”

 

This was not the speech she had rehearsed on the subway. But she couldn’t hold it back anymore.

 

“I know that’s why you hate me,” she said. “I stole your test. And then I lied to you and I lied to Mrs. Choi. And then I blew you off when you gave me the chance to come clean.”

 

She was fourteen-years-old again suddenly, standing in front of Jinyoung and saying everything she should have said to him a long time ago.

 

“It was Song Mino,” Jisoo said, her voice dipping lower as she fought back tears. “I was young and stupid and I thought I was in love with him. So I helped him cheat. I just wanted him to like me. I wanted him to think I was cool and be a part of his friend group. I didn’t even know that test was yours until after, I _promise_.”

 

She angrily wiped at a tear that dared escape her eye.

 

“I know that isn’t an excuse,” Jisoo continued. “I’m not trying to excuse what I did because I know it was wrong. I knew it was wrong even before I did it. I just want you to know that even though we weren’t friends, I never wanted to hurt you.”

 

Jisoo felt stupid repeating Nawon’s words back to Jinyoung as if he didn’t just withhold his forgiveness from her just minutes before. She already knew what he was going to say: that she had hurt him anyway, and for that, he wouldn’t be able to forgive her.

 

Jinyoung, standing there, was also borne back into the past, forced to relive that moment he confronted Jisoo by the shoe lockers. He remembered everything about that day vividly, from the day of the week right down to what he’d had for dinner later that night. He remembered exactly what Jisoo’s face looked like. He remembered exactly where Mino stood. He remembered exactly what Jisoo had said to him.

 

But somehow, standing right here and right now, he couldn’t remember how hurt he felt. He could no longer go back and summon those feelings to the present. They were just… gone. 

 

It was as if all the pain had just shriveled up into dust and blew away with the wind when he wasn’t paying attention. 

 

Maybe it was because he knew now why Jisoo did everything she did in middle school. He knew now how hard it was for her to find real friends as a child. He knew now how alone she was back then, how desperate she was to have someone, even if that someone was Song Mino. 

 

He was silent for so long that Jisoo was about to just turn and leave. But then he spoke up.

 

“Jisoo,” Jinyoung said firmly, keeping her rooted to her spot. When she looked up at him, his eyes were softer, though still stern. He took a step toward her, not letting go of her gaze.

 

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “From now on, tell me the truth, okay?”

 

Jisoo hadn’t meant to come to the SoTech campus to apologize for something she did years ago, but she was suddenly glad she did. She felt a rush of lightness overcoming her. She was so relieved that the tears she’d been holding back actually spilled quietly over. She let out a jagged sigh as she wiped at them with her palms.

 

And then Jinyoung closed the distance between them and _actually hugged her_. 

 

Jisoo tensed up as he pulled her to his chest with one arm. Where this came from, she had no idea. Her first instinct was to wriggle herself out of his arms, but then she didn’t want to ruin the moment. Even though he was wearing long sleeves, she definitely felt the biceps again. She felt the rest of his body, too. He was warm.

 

“It’s okay,” he said. “Stop crying.”

 

Jisoo finally decided to stop being stubborn and just live in the moment. A ten-year long rivalry was finally being put to rest. This was momentous. She threw her pride aside and put her arms around him, too. 

 

Then she remembered why she came to SoTech in the first place.

 

“Why didn’t you answer any of my calls or texts?” she said.

 

“It’s midterm week, I was studying,” Jinyoung said, pulling out of the embrace. “I do have other commitments, you know.”

 

“That’s fine, but you could have let me know, I was panicking,” Jisoo said. “Anyway, the publication party is _this_ weekend. You can spend all day in the library if you want, just make sure you actually shower and shave before the event. You look awful.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “Thanks a lot.”

 

Jisoo shrugged. “Nothing but the truth from now on, remember?”


	15. Opening Up

The Spring issue publication party was taking place at a venue further downtown, and it was less formal than the Scholars’ Gala, so Jisoo couldn’t just reuse her lilac dress. She borrowed a little black one from Jennie that was comfortable and stylish, but it had a low low neckline. Every now and then, Jisoo had to grab the front of her dress and pull it up to cover more of her chest.

 

Beside her on the subway, Jinyoung was wearing the exact same navy suit and black shirt outfit he’d worn to the meeting with Julie Kiyoko. Only this time he had taken the jacket off and laid it on his lap since it was too warm in the underground car, and Jisoo finally had visual confirmation that there was muscle on his arms.

 

He was bent over and staring at his phone screen, which was open to an app that was flashing microbiology vocabulary words at him. Jisoo felt just a little bad that she had to force him out in the middle of studying for exams. But this was her first company event for Embrace, and she needed him.

 

“Say it to me again,” Jisoo said as she moved her hair away from her neck, trying to get some air on it. It really was way too warm inside the subway. Jinyoung didn’t look up as her continued to flip through electronic flash cards.

 

“I got it,” he said.

 

“Then say it to me again,” she said, searching her purse for a hair tie.

 

“Jisoo, seriously,” he said, still not looking up. “Stop worrying, I got it.”

 

“I just need to be sure,” Jisoo snapped. “We _don’t_ want a repeat of the last time, remember?”

 

“It was fine last time, too,” Jinyoung said, finally looking up at her just as she was tying her hair into a ponytail. He didn’t notice earlier, but now that her hair was up, he realized just how much skin her dress showed. It really was warm in that carriage.

 

“Just say it again, Jinyoung,” Jisoo snapped. “From the top. We’re doing this, what’s our plan?”

 

Jinyoung shut his phone off and leaned back in his seat as he repeated what he read from their updated script.

 

“We met at school when we were twelve,” he said in bored tone. “I had a crush on you but you didn’t like me back, so we became friends. I never brought my feelings back up because there was too much to lose if things didn’t go well. We lost touch in college until about two, three months ago. We met at a party, I called you the next day and asked you out. And now I am your fake boyfriend.”

 

That was a condensed version of the extremely long and detailed account of their fake relationship that Jisoo had drafted. But if he was as diligent in studying it as he was in studying those flash cards, Jisoo trusted that he could come up with the details if needed. Still, she wanted to be sure. She quizzed him:

 

“Where was our first date?” she asked.

 

“At the river.”

 

“What did we do?”

 

Jinyoung sighed. “We rode bikes and played badminton and had a picnic,” he said, trying to remember what she wrote. “You were wearing a white and red dress, and there was a guitarist busking at the park.”

 

“Good. And my favorite color is?”

 

Jinyoung didn’t answer right away. He took the opportunity to look at Jisoo, and he had an amused look on his face.

 

“Do you know what _my_ favorite color is?” he asked. Jisoo was caught off guard.

 

“Uh. No,” she said.

 

“And you don’t think they’re going to be asking you those questions about me, too?” Jinyoung said, crossing his arms in a way that made it impossible not to notice that he did indeed put some muscle on his arms. Jisoo thought about his question and realized, begrudgingly, that he was right.

 

“What _is_ your favorite color?” she asked. Jisoo crossed her arms, too, in such a way that did for her chest what crossing arms did for his biceps. Jinyoung forced himself to look at her face.

 

“White,” answered.

 

“Okay. And your favorite kind of music?” Jisoo said, committing each answer to memory in case Julie Kiyoko happened to ask her.

 

“R&B,” he said.

 

“Your favorite food?”

 

“The usual,” he said. “Burgers, pizza, steak, though really anything with meat in it. Chocolate is good, too. And pasta. Rice is good, too. Anything with meat or rice in it.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. “So you eat everything. Got it.”

 

“Anything else?” Jinyoung asked, laughing lightly. There was a question that Jisoo had wanted to ask for a while, actually.

 

“Did you invite me to the gala to make Nawon jealous?”

 

He looked at Jisoo’s face and saw that she was serious and wanted an actual answer. Jinyoung’s playful smile faded. Her question saddened him. Is that really what she thought?

 

“No,” he answered gently. He was about to leave it at that, but the way she raised her brows told him that she wasn’t satisfied. She wanted more. Jinyoung sighed.

 

“We dated over seven months,” Jinyoung began slowly, rubbing his wrist. “Nawon and I, we were the biology department’s favorite couple. When we broke up, everyone wanted to know why. Everyone was so worried about us, about me. I couldn’t take how concerned everyone was. I just wanted them to leave me alone.”

 

He saw her nod. He took a deep breath.

 

“I thought that if I brought a date,” he said. “People would think that I had moved on.”

 

Jisoo understood doing things out of self-preservation better than most. She remembered Jinyoung being an intensely private person. She, too, was a very private person, at least when it came to certain things. Her writing especially. Writing was an intensely personal thing for Jisoo. It was a dream that she had nurtured and cared for her almost all on her own, and it was a dream that she didn’t trust in the hands of anyone but herself.

 

She supposed Jinyoung was like that with his feelings. It was plain to see that he had cared for Nawon deeply and that her betrayal had hurt him, and even if he did hate Nawon now, she was still a part of his life and had been for seven months. Yet Jisoo never seemed to see him mourning.

 

“ _Have_ you moved on, though?” Jisoo asked.

 

Jinyoung stopped himself from answering too quickly and giving a reflexive, empty “yes.” If Jisoo had asked him this even just a week ago, he might have said he hadn’t yet. But finally being able to tell Nawon exactly how he felt and hearing her side of the story was exactly the kind of closure he needed to end that chapter of life and… move on.

 

And he wasn’t oblivious: he knew that Jisoo was part of the reason for that. The corner of his mouth curled into a content smile.

 

“I’m starting to.”

 

 

 

 

 

The publication party was taking place on the covered rooftop of The LEDGE, a trendy urban-style apartment complex. Tents had been set up, and string lights were hanging from the beams above. There was an open bar on one side of the area, hightop table for mingling, and a dance floor with a DJ playing 80’s soul music. Julie Kiyoko found Jisoo almost as soon as she walked in.

 

“Jisoo! We’re so excited you could make it!” she said, pulling Jisoo in for a hug, holding a cosmopolitan in one hand. She pulled Jinyoung in for a hug, too.

 

“Let me introduce you to our creative director, Seungri!” Julie said, introducing her to a tall, sturdy, good-looking man in a crimson suit. So _that’s_ Seungri. Jisoo tried to commit his face to memory so she could ask him later if she could sit in on that redesign meeting.

 

Jinyoung followed close behind Jisoo as Julie led her around the room, introducing the new editorial assistant and her boyfriend to the rest of the Embrace staff. Jinyoung lost track of people’s names and faces after the fourth staff writer, but he could see Jisoo trying to focus, trying to memorize every person’s name, title, and face. He only smiled and shook people’s hands now and then.

 

“Oh! It’s Dara!” Jisoo said, and before Jinyoung could even tell who she was looking at, Jisoo had already taken off in the direction of the open bar, where a thin woman in a red dress was waiting for a cocktail. Despite her styled hair and tasteful makeup, she looked tired. Jinyoung dodged people in the crowd to follow after Jisoo.

 

“Dara! You’re here!” Jisoo said in a cheerful voice. The associate managing editor of Embrace cast a disinterested glance at her editorial assistant. Jisoo smiled.

 

“I’m glad you came,” Jisoo said.

 

“What do you mean? Of course, I came, I’m the associate managing editor,” Dara said. She looked Jisoo up and down and then at the young man who appeared at her side.

 

“I just wanted to let you know,” Jisoo said, fidgeting with her fingers. “I called the printers yesterday and… well, they said that they can do the extra copies for the fall and winter issues but… the spring ones won’t be available until Monday at the earliest.”

 

Dara shut her eyes and let out a slow breath, as if to fight back her irritation.

 

“Call them back and tell them to forget the winter issues, then,” Dara said. “I leave for the lit fair tomorrow, there’s no point in getting them in on Monday.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said, her shoulders falling. “Okay, I will. Have a safe journey, then.”

 

“Who is this?” Dara said, gesturing to Jinyoung as the wait handed her a Manhattan.

 

“This is my boyfriend, Jinyoung,” Jisoo said, grabbing Jinyoung by the elbow and bringing him front and center. Jinyoung smiled and held his hand out for a handshake,

 

“It’s good to meet you!” he said. Dara gave him a quick, curt handshake and Jinyoung could practically feel her withholding her friendship.

 

“Enjoy yourselves,” Dara said flatly before walking away and leaving the couple asking themselves what just happened. Jinyoung turned to Jisoo and scoffed.

 

“She seems friendly,” he said.

 

“Don’t bad-mouth her,” Jisoo said. “She’s my supervisor. If I want to stay here long, I need to make her happy. She’s just stressed, I think, with the redesign happening and we still haven’t figured out what to do about the short feature. And the summer issue is due out in four months.”

 

“I don’t know about this,” Jinyoung said as they found a wall to lean against that was near the dance floor. Jisoo furrowed her brows at him.

 

“What do you mean?” she said.

 

“I thought you wanted to write books,” he said. “This all seems a little too… corporate for you. Not really the kind of environment I’d imagine fosters creativity.”

 

Jisoo scoffed and then turned to watch the people dancing as the music slowed.

 

In truth, Jisoo had been thinking the same thing after her first two weeks of working there. She had been looking forward to working with writers and being allowed to write a few short features now and then. But Dara said that editorial assistants don’t do short features, and she’d been stuck making phone calls and buying stress balls on Amazon for most of her first few days at Embrace. Life at Embrace was… different than she imagined. But she had worked too hard to land this job. She was determined to make it work.

 

Still. She wondered when she would get to write. She missed it. The rush she felt when she was workshopping a new idea or drafting a new story was unlike anything else in the world, and she missed it, craved it. It had been a while since she was last hard at work on a project she cared about.

 

“Do you want to dance?” Jinyoung asked, breaking her out of her trance.

 

“Huh?” she said, looking at him.

 

“At the gala,” Jinyoung said. “You asked me to dance, and I said we could later, but we never got to.”

 

Jisoo immediately blushed, recalling that she had done that.

 

“Oh, I wasn’t asking you to dance!” she said, flustered. “I was just asking you if you _liked_ dancing. There’s a difference.”

 

“Oh,” Jinyoung said. They fell silent and Jisoo suddenly felt awkward. Why was it so hot on that rooftop?

 

“Yes,” Jinyoung said out of the blue.

 

“What?”

 

“ _Yes_ , I do like dancing.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said, feeling nervous all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason. She gave him a nervous smile and he flashed one back at her, but then his eyes suddenly filled with a gentle look of disappointment. She chewed on her bottom lip.

 

“Me, too,” she whispered, looking down at her feet.

 

A few seconds later, Jinyoung held his hand out to her. Jisoo looked at his palm and then at his face. He had a gentle smile on his lips, and Jisoo felt her heart jump up into her throat.

 

“Come on, Julie Kiyoko is watching,” Jinyoung said, leaning into her. “We have to play the part.”

 

Jisoo hesitated. Then, slowly, tentatively she took his hand and let him lead her onto the dance floor. The DJ was still playing slow music while couples took to each other’s arms and swayed softly beneath the strings of lights. There weren’t any stars this deep in the city, but the lights made a lovely second-best-thing.

 

The last time Jisoo had slow-danced with a boy was in high school, at the Senior Ball, with boy from a neighboring school whose name she couldn’t even recall anymore. She was too scared and it was too late to admit to Jinyoung that she might be painfully rusty by the time she put his hand on her waist, pulled her close, and started to sway. She hoped he couldn’t see her cheeks burning, or feel her heart beating erratically.

 

She saw that he’d taken her advice and actually shaved before coming tonight. He no longer looked like the library caveman in the navy suit that fit him impeccably and he smelled faintly of soap.

 

Jisoo couldn’t help but notice that he’d put on some weight since high school. He didn’t look like he was hiding a ripped physique or abs of steel like the guys on Tinder. But his shoulders were broad and his chest looked good. And while climbing the stairs up to the roof earlier, she mentally scolded herself for looking at his backside. He’d been a skinny kid all the way up to graduation, so seeing him now, looking solid and strong made Jisoo feel weird and slightly panicked. She was used to looking at Jinyoung and seeing a boy, not… a man.

 

“Do you mind if we talk while we dance?” Jisoo said in a desperate attempt to calm herself. “It’s… kind of awkward to just stare at you.”

 

He laughed.

 

“Sure,” he said. “It _is_ kind of awkward. What’s on your mind?”

 

Jisoo thought of something to talk about. Something that could keep them conversing for a while since she did _not_ want to just sway here in silence.

 

“So,” she said. “Was… Nawon your… first girlfriend?”

 

“You want to talk my ex-girlfriend?” Jinyoung said, his voice lined with light amusement. Jisoo scoffed.

 

“Well, you asked me what was on my mind,” she said.

 

“And _that’s_ what’s on your mind?”

 

She rolled her eyes.

 

“You don’t have to answer,” Jisoo said. “We can talk about something else. What do you want to discuss? Politics? Climate change? The Kardashians?”

 

“She was my second girlfriend,” Jinyoung said, surrendering. At first, he thought he would feel a familiar stab of pain discussing his past with Nawon. But he was pleasantly surprised to see that he felt… practically nothing at all. It was liberating, being about to talk about Nawon without spiraling into a depressive mood. He felt light.

 

“We met in class,” he said. “And then one day, she faked a sprained ankle so she could see me at my job at the campus infirmary. We got dinner later, and then got dinner a couple more times and then started dating.”

 

“Okay,” Jisoo said, surprisingly comfortable as they discussed his ex-girlfriend. She decided she was too curious and then pressed on.

 

“So, for conversation’s sake, who was your _first_ girlfriend?” Jisoo asked next. To her surprise, Jinyoung broke into a huge smile and tried to stop himself from laughing.

 

“Do you remember a girl named Seo Ha Na in high school?” he said.

 

Jisoo widened her eyes at first and then started laughing, too.

 

“Shut up,” she said in disbelief. “Oh my _god_. You dated Ha Na?”

 

“For three and a half months in senior year,” he said, still smiling, amused. “We broke up before graduation. Why are you surprised? You didn’t think I had game back then?”

 

Jisoo laughed. “It’s not that!” she said, remembering a skinny girl with bobbed hair who wore a floral headband and dark eyeliner to school everyday.

 

“It’s just… Seo Ha Na? For real?” Jisoo asked.

 

“What?” Jinyoung said, acting like he was offended. “She was pretty. She was nice to me in history class.”

 

“No, I get it, but… wasn’t she kind of—”

 

“Completely insane?” Jinyoung said. “Yeah, she _was_. She broke it off because she didn’t want to have any attachments going into college, but I was actually a little relieved. I still feel bad about that.”

 

“No! Don’t be,” Jisoo said, smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt. “I actually heard she got arrested for drug possession two years ago.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed. He could top that.

 

“One time,” he said, taking Jisoo’s hand and twirling her. “She came to my house in the middle of the night, sat on the porch and just _cried_ until my family woke up. When I went outside to see her, she just left like nothing happened.”

 

Jisoo burst out laughing. Jinyoung was mesmerized.

 

“I guess I dodged a bullet,” he said when she twirled back into him.

 

“Remember when the cops had to break up a party at her house?” Jisoo said, bringing up another high school memory. “That guy from class 3-3 had to get his stomach pumped?”

 

Jinyoung did remember. He laughed, too. “Not funny,” he said. “He almost died.”

 

“I know!” Jisoo said, suddenly looking offended by the memory. “But then he transferred and didn’t even notify the school! He owed me $60 for a textbook! Asshole!”

 

Jinyoung laughed again. It seemed like he hadn’t stopped laughing since the conversation began. For the longest time, he only ever looked back on high school as a time marked by intense studying and preparation. But now he realized that there were actually some good memories from back then.

 

“I still want my money,” Jisoo said when she was finally calm enough to speak again. Jinyoung couldn’t help but notice that she was starting to take the lead in the dance, and that her voice didn’t sound as nervous anymore. He was glad he got to steer the conversation away from Nawon. But there was something else he was curious about.

 

“Anyway, enough about me,” he said as Jisoo led them in the dance. “Why haven’t _you_ ever dated anyone?”

 

Jisoo’s smile didn’t fade, but it softened somewhat. She supposed she’d have to talk about this sooner or later anyway.

 

“The official reason is: I didn’t want to, but it’s actually… a combination of a bunch of different reasons,” she said in a composed, practiced voice. “Being busy at school, not having time to date, being too focused on my own goals, meeting too many weirdos.”

 

It was supposed to satisfy him, but it didn’t. He noticed the change in her voice immediately.

 

“Jisoo,” he said, and then caught her gaze and gave her a look that seemed to say that he knew there was more to it than that. Jisoo sighed and hesitated again before saying:

 

“The truth is, I just never met anyone I wanted to be with.”

 

The answer wasn’t what Jinyoung expected.

 

“Really?” he said incredulously. “Not even that TA from your business class? Jaebum?”

 

Jisoo was surprised he even remembered Jaebum. She considered her TA for a minute, looking down at their feet as she examined her feelings for him.

 

“I mean, I definitely think he’s attractive,” Jisoo said carefully after thinking about Jaebum. “And he’s smart. He has a job at Vector Marketing and looks good in a tank top. Who knows? I _might_ date him one day. But I’d want to get to know him, first, and I just haven’t had the opportunity.”

 

Jinyoung nodded, not quite sure how he felt. “I see,” he said.

 

They were quiet again for a little bit. Jinyoung’s question got Jisoo thinking, though. Thinking about what exactly it was she even wanted from a relationship. Got her thinking about what sort of romance she envisioned for herself. She didn’t know she suddenly had the urge to tell him, but she was speaking before she could stop herself:

 

“Do you read books?” she asked. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Yeah. But not romance novels,” he said. “More crime and psychological thriller, I guess. Manly books, you know.”

 

Jisoo laughed gently.

 

“In romance novels, there’s always that moment when the heroine realizes she’s in love with the hero,” Jisoo began to explain. “And she feels so completely, overwhelmingly, radiantly, sublimely happy. Like, she feels so completely surrounded by it, she sees and feels it everywhere she looks. She feels completely, utterly dissolved in it.”

 

Jinyoung watched her as she spoke. She was looking at him, but he felt like she wasn’t actually seeing him. Even though she was here in his arms, he felt like she was actually somewhere far away, somewhere inside her mind, inside the secret world where she only lived. Her eyes were glassy and far-seeing and full of wonder.

 

It made him remember that first day of school ten years ago. Her eyes looked like that. Like windows into an entire universe of possibility. And then in a moment, she was back.

 

“I know it’s stupid, but _that’s_ what I want,” she said, finally coming back to the real world. Jinyoung twirled her again.

 

“You’re talking about true love,” he said when he realized it. She scoffed.

 

“Yeah, sure. I guess that’s what it’s called,” she said. “Anyway, no one’s come along yet who’s made me feel that.”

 

“Do you believe it even exists?”

 

She gave him a stern, determined look.

 

“I _want_ to,” she said, as if she could make it happen simply because she willed it. It made him feel afraid all of a sudden. What if it didn’t happen for her? What if it didn’t exist?

 

“Anyway,” Jisoo said, changing the direction of their talk. “I guess there isn’t really an equivalent moment in crime books, unless, maybe, it’s like when you’re reading Agatha Christie and you finally learn whodunnit. Or when you finally understand why the guy covered for the murderer in a Higashino novel.”

 

Jinyoung was struck. “You’ve read Keigo Higashino?”

 

“Just one,” Jisoo said. “ _The Devotion of Suspect X_. It sounded like there was gonna be a little romance in it. It was good!”

 

She smiled as she approved the book, and Jinyoung just stared blankly at her. Thinking.

 

“Hmm,” he said as the song ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Jisoo!” someone shouted as Jisoo and Jinyoung were standing at a hightop table, sipping on drink and listening to someone talk about running a marathon. Thankful for the interruption, they both turned and saw Julie Kiyoko making her way toward the both of them. She grabbed both Jinyoung and Jisoo around the wrist and gently pulled them, apologizing to their conversation partner for the intrusion.

 

“It’s time for an Embrace tradition,” Julie said. Jinyoung and Jisoo realized that she was leading them toward a raised platform, and they both inwardly panicked.

 

“I have the newbies!” yelled Seungri, who had just finished dragging another couple to the stage. Julie brought Jinyoung and Jisoo to stand next to them on the platform and then herself climbed up. She started to clink her glass with a spoon, calling for quiet and attention.

 

“Everyone settle down!” she said. “So, as you know, Embrace is all about…” she gestured to the crowd and everyone shouted back:

 

“LOVE!”

 

Julie smiled. “Right!” she said. “Which is why we invite every one of our staff to find love and grab onto it! And then we embarrass them in front of everyone!”

 

The crowd laughed, and Jisoo and Jinyoung did, too, but nervously.

 

“Just kidding,” Julie said, addressing the two nervous couples behind her. “But this is a tradition. We’re all family here at Embrace and we want you and your significant to feel comfortable with us. Which is why we are about to play a little game together! It’s time for Power Couple!”

 

Jisoo felt like puking. Yes, she had already gone over the script with Jinyoung, but there was no way they were anywhere near prepared for _this_. She didn’t know this was what they were going into. She looked at Jinyoung, and he looked just as nervous. She looked across the stage at the other couple. They were nervous, too.

 

“Just stay calm,” she whispered to Jinyoung, though she was really saying it to herself. “Just do it like we rehearsed. You remember the script, right?”

 

“This might be a good time to mention that I have crippling stage fright,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo looked at him, horrified.

 

“Park Jinyoung, I swear, you better _not_ crash and burn on me right now,” Jisoo said. “Just stay calm. Just stay calm.”

 

“I’m trying.”

 

The game ended up being a version of Jeopardy, with a question board projected onto a white screen in which the boys could choose a category and answer a question about their girlfriend. Jinyoung did surprisingly well, Jisoo thought, considering that he had to guess her shoe size and dig deep into his memory to remember that her father’s name was Jang-gyeom. Jisoo missed the question about Jinyoung’s favorite smell (which happened to be rain — how was she supposed to know he was such a fucking hipster?)

 

They were otherwise neck-and-neck with the other couple—until the speed round came, and both Jisoo and Jinyoung choked under the added pressure.

 

When the game ended, Julie came back on stage, laughing as she applauded both the couples’ efforts.

 

“Woah, what a tight game!” Julie said. “But unfortunately… Jisoo, Jinyoung… you choked. Which means, Suho, Eunji, you two are the Power Couple!”

 

The crowd applauded the winning couple while Jisoo and Jinyoung were just glad the damned game was over, never mind that they had lost. Suho and Eunji were a _real_ couple, it was to be expected that they would win. Considering that Suho even knew that Eunji’s guinea had its right eye removed on a Thursday, Jisoo supposed they deserved it. She applauded them like a good sport.

 

Julie handed Suho and Eunji an expensive bottle of Scotch whiskey as a prize while the crowd ogled them with envy. The two walked off stage hand-in-hand, glowing with pride. Then Julie turned to Jisoo and Jinyoung.

 

“As for you two,” Julie said. “Unfortunately, the losers have to deal with a punishment. But for now, we’ll give you an easy one.”

 

Jisoo was relieved until Julie revealed what that “punishment” was:

 

“You two can just kiss in front of us.”

 

Jinyoung and Jisoo both turned and stared at each other, as if to ask the other what they were supposed to do now. Neither of them had any idea. Jisoo was sweating. Jinyoung looked nervous. Then they both looked back at Julie, who crossed her arms and was tapping her foot.

 

“We’re waiting!” she said. Then all of a sudden, the crowd started chanting:

 

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

 

Jisoo’s cheeks started to burn up. She stared at everyone in the crowd and wished she could disappear. This was _not_ happening right now. She startled to tremble, started to breathe heavily, started to fade back into that place in her head where she went when she got scared.

 

And then Jinyoung touched her face.

 

And then suddenly she was back in the real world. Back on the rooftop of the LEDGE, back standing on that stage, back feeling nervous.

 

And then suddenly his lips were on hers.

 

All the noise fell away. All the chanting was muted. She didn’t hear the crowd erupting into ooh’s and aww’s. She didn’t see Julie Kiyoko pretending to wipe tears from her eyes. She didn’t even hear herself gasp softly the moment she felt his lips. For one tiny, _tiny_ , flashing starburst of a moment, she was back in the hallowed halls of the world inside her mind, where lived alone.

 

Except this time, he was there with her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: HEY, MOSES AHN. IF FOR SOME REASON YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE AND I STILL WANT MY $60.


	16. Business as Usual

_Fuck_. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

 

Jisoo was sitting in on a meeting with Dara and Julie later in the week as they were once again discussing options for the introductory short feature, which traditionally always came from an internal writer. Jisoo was scribbling onto a notepad, mindlessly jotting down keywords, but she wasn’t really there.

 

She was far away in her head, which in turn was still back in the weekend, thinking about the publication party. And more specifically thinking about Jinyoung. And even more specifically thinking about the kiss.

 

Which happened to be her first one. Ever.

 

The memory of it was still on her lips. When the party was over and Jinyoung brought her back home, she went to bed with butterflies in her stomach, heart fluttering, and skin burning. She didn’t sleep a wink. She showed up at work exhausted.

 

Everything was going to be so much more complicated now.

 

Mentally, she scoffed at herself. Who the hell develops feelings for the first guy who kisses her? That’s like trying to cast a movie and giving the lead role to the first actor to walk through the door and not even letting the other 500 actors audition.

 

Every time Jisoo thought about what could be happening in her heart, a voice in her head talked over her and reminded her why she was an idiot for letting herself think that way:

 

He kissed me.

 

It was fake. Julie Kiyoko was watching.

 

He kissed me.

 

You’re paying him $200.

 

He kissed me.

 

It’s a business deal, Jisoo! Get your head on straight or you’ll get hurt!

 

He kissed me.

 

He’s Jinyoung! You know, that boy you hated up until about a month ago?

 

But I didn’t hate him.

 

Jisoo stopped scribbling notes and stared down at her hands. She was annoyed by Jinyoung. She was intimidated by him. She sometimes felt sorry for him. She was irritated by him. She was jealous of him.

 

But the truth was she never hated him. Not even back then. Not even a little bit. But it begged the question yet again: if she didn’t hate him, then what did she call these strong feelings she had for him?

 

Not love. Despite her inexperience, she knew that it was much too early for that. But she couldn’t help but think that between the kiss, the dance, the hug, the time he defended her from that jerk, and all the shy looks and the little touches and the endless amount of bantering, that there was _something_ there. Something that could just be a business deal.

 

“Jisoo?” said Julie Kiyoko, taking her out of her stupor. Jisoo sat upright.

 

“Yes?” she said. Dara was crossing her arms and looking at her while Julie leaned forward on her elbows.

 

“I said, do you have any ideas for the short feature?”

 

If Julie had asked her this question at a time when she wasn’t thinking about Jinyoung, Jisoo might have excitedly started rambling off about all the ideas she had for a short feature. But she was too distracted. The ideas came to her too slowly. Dara cut in before she could answer.

 

“Julie, secretaries don’t write short features,” Dara said. “We’ve plenty of staff to do this. I’ve been coordinating with Jessica and Chaelin. They’ve been with us longer—”

 

“I know they have, and I appreciate them a lot,” Julie said. “But I really want to go with a fresher, nostalgic concept for the summer issue.”

 

Jisoo wished she could be more present in the conversation. But she had problems of her own. When the meeting ended, Jisoo returned to her desk and just sat there, tense and rigid. She looked over at the envelope she’d hidden under her keyboard. Inside it was $200 in cash. Her first paycheck came in over the weekend, and she had not forgotten the amount that she and Jinyoung had agreed on. That was all before the kiss, of course. Before all these thoughts about uncertainties and possibilities started to plague her.

 

Would she even _want_ to date Jinyoung?

 

She couldn’t say for sure that the way she felt around him matched her idea of true love. And she had always told herself that she couldn’t date anyone who didn’t make her feel that way. So it didn’t make sense, the way she felt toward him. This was the first time someone had ever made her want to break her own rules.

 

But what if this really was all just about the money for him?

 

She checked the time on her computer and saw that it was noon. Earlier that day, he had messaged her, asking if he could come by the office to see her during her lunch break. He didn’t tell her why. Jisoo pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself down. She came up with a plan.

 

When they met today, she would hand him the money. If he took it, then she’d know that it was all just a business transaction to him. And then she could do her job and stamp out these silly feelings before they could seriously hurt her.

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung was on the subway en route to the offices of Jeon & Sky Publishing to meet Jisoo. He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, going over the plan again in his head. He would hand her the book, and then he would tell her how he felt.

 

After that night at the publication party, Jinyoung was at odds with himself. Two voices battled each other in his head, trying convince him that either the kiss was real or that he’d just done it to placate her coworkers.

 

You didn’t have to kiss her.

 

Julie Kiyoko was watching.

 

You could have kissed her hand.

 

Her coworkers would have demanded more.

 

You could have kissed her cheek.

 

Julie Kiyoko wanted us to kiss on the mouth.

 

You didn’t have to.

 

I know. But I wanted to.

 

Jinyoung was the type of person whose actions were ruled by rationality and logic. He never did anything without first thinking it through and coming up with a course of action that would yield the most favorable results. So telling Jisoo that he had feelings for her beyond the scope of their agreement without first knowing her own feelings was a risk. Still, he knew he had to do it. This was the first time Jinyoung wanted to take a leap of faith instead of playing it safe.

 

He kept think about that night, kept thinking about how her hand felt in his while they danced, kept thinking about how stunning she looked when she was smiling and twirling under the lights and back into his arms. He kept thinking about how she had gone off on Nawon in front of the library, how she seemed to just understand without a single word.

 

Jinyoung thought he had locked these old, childish feelings away for good, but these past months, they’d burst out and besieged him yet again, stronger. And this time they wouldn’t let him go unless he did something about it.

 

When he got off at the stop for Jeon & Skye Publishing, Jinyoung left his nerves in the carriage and tried to ascend to the ground floor with high spirits and confidence. He had seen the way she looked at him ever since the kiss. It was different. She felt something for him, too. He was almost sure she did.

 

He walked down the street until he reached the building, book in hand. When Jinyoung got closer, he saw Jisoo leaning against the wall, fidgeting with something behind her back. He checked the time and saw that it was only 12:45.

 

“You’re early,” he said. When he got closer, he saw her eyes widen. _They’re different_ , he thought to himself.

 

“No, I’m not,” she said. “ _You’re_ late.”

 

“I thought you said your lunch break was at 12:50?” he said.

 

“That was my old job,” Jisoo said, smirking. “My new lunch break is at 12:15. I should have told you. Whatever it is, it’ll have to be fast. I need to get back to work.”

 

Jinyoung’s spirits dampened somewhat. He had been hoping to get her away from the offices, maybe to a coffee shop nearby where they could talk quietly, alone. But he decided not to let this small hiccup ruin his plans. His heart was too full. No matter what, he was _going_ to tell her the truth about his feelings. But he didn’t want to just spring them on to her, so he decided to start with the book.

 

“I have something for you,” he said, smiling and holding the book up.

 

“Oh, me, too,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung was curious.

 

“Okay,” he said. “You go first, then.”

 

Jisoo took her hands from her back and then handed him a blush-colored envelope thick with wads of cash. Jinyoung’s smile faded.

 

 _You’re an idiot_ , he thought to himself.

 

Of course. Right. This was how it was between them. A quid pro quo, something for something. Business as usual.

 

His heart felt crushed as he reached out slowly and took the envelope from her. Jisoo swallowed hard as the envelope went from her hand to his.

 

 _You stupid girl_ , she thought to herself. How could she forget that this was all just an arrangement?

 

But Jisoo shoved aside her feelings of hurt. She cleared her throat. “It’s all in there,” she said, trying to sound more put together than she was feelings. “$200, and your new log-in info, so you can access your new, free Embrace subscription. As promised.”

 

She laughed lightly, but Jinyoung’s face was blank for a beat longer. Then, he smiled, too. Though she noticed that it wasn’t his real smile.

 

“Um, thank you,” he said quietly, then he scoffed. “I was… wondering when you were getting to this.”

 

“It does take a few weeks for me to get on their pay roll,” Jisoo said. “Anyway, you said you had something, too?”

 

“Oh, right,” Jinyoung said. He handed the book to her and Jisoo received it with both hands.

 

It was _Malice_ by Keigo Higashino. The book Nawon had returned to him unread.

 

“I figured your book shelf could use a little variety,” Jinyoung said. “You should read it. It’s about a writer who kills another writer but no one knows why, but one persistent detective is determined to find out.”

 

Jisoo smirked.

 

“So what are you trying to tell me?” Jisoo said, flipping the book over to read the back flap. “That you think this is the start of my descent into a serial murderous rage?”

 

“With your talent for making up stories, I wouldn’t put it past you,” Jinyoung said, smiling softly. “Anyway, I just… had that lying around. You mentioned you liked his other book, so I thought you’d like this one, too. You don’t have to read it if you’re too busy.”

 

Jisoo looked at him sadly. “I’m helping Dara find someone to write the short feature,” she said. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Why don’t _you_ write it?” he said.

 

“Dara says new girls don’t write short features,” Jisoo said. She looked down at her feet sadly and Jinyoung wanted to put his arms around there, and then shake her and tell her that she was a writer and that she ought to be writing. But he didn’t. After she thanked him again for the book and he thanked her for the payment, Jisoo said that she had to go back to work. So they turned and went their separate ways.

 

Back on the subway, Jinyoung scolded himself again. He prided himself in being the kind of person who valued right and wrong more keenly than most. He shouldn’t have gotten too involved. In fact, he should have told Jisoo then and there that he no longer wanted any part in her little scam, that he was done being used by her, done letting her use him to lie to people and get what she wanted.

 

But then a voice in his head told him that if he did that, he might never see her again. And that wasn’t what he wanted either. He sat back against his seat on the train, frustrated and heartbroken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually undoes all the romantic build-up from the last 15 chapters in 2000 words*


	17. Balance

Jisoo wasn’t paying attention in Business and New Media, which wasn’t at all unusual since she never paid much attention in that class. Except this time, instead of dreaming short blurbs for short stories or ideas for possible future novels or staring at her hot TA, she was thinking about Jinyoung.

 

Everything is fine, she kept telling herself. She hated feeling so hurt and betrayed even though technically, she thought, Jinyoung did nothing wrong. She was the one who came to him with the business proposition in the first place. There was no sense in feeling so hurt just because he did what he agreed to do. She was just being ridiculous and crazy and over-dramatic again. Her over-active imagination was making her see things that weren’t there, again. Making her think there was something more in the way he looked at her than there really was. Time to face reality, she thought.

 

She tucked her lucky flower bookmark into the crease of page 147 of _Malice_ and then set the book aside as she tried to focus. She’d already read it, anyway. Twice, in fact, in the last three days after Jinyoung had given it to her. It made her wonder why she never read more crime books. This one had her hooked. But hanging onto his book wasn’t going to make backtracking out of her feelings for him any easier, so she supposed it would be better to set it aside altogether.

 

Jaebum wasn’t wearing a suit today. He chose to show up to class in a white shirt beneath a faded denim jacket that made his shoulders look especially wide. Funny, Jisoo thought: she might have swooned over that if she were her normal self today.

 

When class ended, Jisoo packed her things and was on her way out the door when Jaebum called out her name. She stopped and turned to him. He handed her back a packet of paper that she recognized as the second draft of her paper.

 

“Better,” he said, smirking as he handed it to her. “You made a lot of good revisions, you’ll see my notes when you look through it.”

 

“Thanks,” Jisoo said, taking it from him. Jaebum leaned against the professor’s desk.

 

“How’s your new job?” he asked. “Where is it, again?”

 

Jisoo had forgotten that she never told him. She had sort of made a point of avoiding him ever since her slip-up at the Gumiho.

 

“It’s at this literary journal,” Jisoo said. “You probably don’t know which one it is. Anyway, it’s going great, thank you.”

 

Jaebum nodded. “You know, at the Gumiho that time,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty about leaving Vector Marketing.”

 

Jisoo raised her eyebrows. “Oh,” she said. “That’s nice, but it’s okay, I didn’t even take it that way. No harm done.”

 

He smirked. “They really miss you over there, you know,” he said. Jisoo laughed a little.

 

“That’s nice of you to say,” she said. “But I highly doubt it.”

 

Jaebum laughed, too. “Well, _I_ do, at least,” he said. Jisoo blushed reflexively, the way she always did when a cute boy paid her a compliment. He did look nice in that denim jacket, and she never once doubted her good judgment when it came to liking him. She smiled shyly.

 

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

 

Jaebum nodded. “Anyway,” he said. “I hope your new job is treating you well. A few more drafts and I’m sure your paper will be ready to submit. I meant what I said last time, too: your writing is really good. You could be a writer.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. Funny he should mention that. He turned around and started to pack his things up into his own bag, and Jisoo took this as her cue to take her leave. But she didn’t turn around or make any move to exit the room. She stood there, thinking. She stood there so long that when Jaebum turned back around, he laughed a little seeing that she was still standing there.

 

“Was there anything else?” he asked. Jisoo chewed on her bottom lip. She might as well.

 

“Do you… want to get dinner with me sometime?” she asked. Immediately, her heart started pounding. Wow, she thought to herself. _I actually did it._ Jaebum looked slightly taken aback, too.

 

“Wow,” he said blankly, and Jisoo started to laugh nervously and back away toward the door.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, laughing. “Totally inappropriate and a conflict of interest, I shouldn’t have—”

 

“Sure,” Jaebum said, cutting her off. Jisoo froze and blinked in shock.

 

“Wait,” she said. “Seriously?”

 

Jaebum smiled. “I mean, I was just shocked you actually asked,” he said. Jisoo pressed her palms to her flushing cheeks.

 

“You mean, you knew I was gonna ask you?” she said.

 

“You’ve been staring at me from the back of the class all semester,” Jaebum said. “It wasn’t rocket science. I just didn’t think you’d ever come out and ask.”

 

Jisoo mentally slapped herself. Was she really _that_ transparent? Her horrified expression must have seriously exaggerated because Jaebum started laughing again as he swung his bag onto his shoulder.

 

“But, yes,” he said. “Dinner sounds great. How about Saturday night?”

 

Jisoo was so flustered, she forgot how to speak properly.

 

“Saturday—dinner, so—yeah—sounds—sounds good!” she said, stammering and laughing nervously. “Saturday night sounds good!”

 

They exchanged phone numbers, and after confirming their plans, Jisoo dashed out the door and toward the bus stop. Saturday night. A date. With Im Jaebum. Dinner. Wow. This was real. Despite all her worrying over Jinyoung earlier that day, Jisoo couldn’t help but feel empowered. Ah, she thought: so this was how it felt when girls made the first move. No wonder Rose, Lisa, and Jennie did it so often. Why had she insisted so long on waiting for stupid boys to ask her first?

 

She had to get home. She had to tell Jennie and the girls. She had to find an outfit.

 

 

 

 

 

“Jennie! You’ll never guess what I just did!” Jisoo said, bursting into Jennie’s room as soon as she got home. Jennie whipped around, holding a cleaning spray and a dirty rag. She was in the middle of cleaning her room when Jisoo barged in. Her eyes were wide.

 

“You killed someone?” Jennie asked. Jisoo jumped onto Jennie’s bed, which had just been made, and started squeezing a pillow in her excitement.

 

“No,” Jisoo said. “I just asked Jaebum out on a date! And we’re getting dinner on Saturday night! I actually did it! I made the first move! I feel like such a boss right now!”

 

Jisoo threw the pillow up and then punched it mid-air, causing it to spiral and land on an armchair that Jennie had in her room. Her best friend, however, had a cold reaction.

 

“Wait. Jaebum?” Jennie asked. Jisoo nodded.

 

“Yes!” she said, falling back onto the covers. “You know, that hot TA that I’ve been crushing on for, like, ever? I asked him out!”

 

Jennie set down her cleaning tools and walked closer to her bed. “But… what about Jinyoung?” she asked. Jisoo frowned and then sat up on the bed.

 

“I told you,” she said, sternly. “That’s _nothing_ , I’m not dating Jinyoung.”

 

“No, of course not,” Jennie said sarcastically, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “You two just… go to fancy galas and publication parties together and talk all the time.”

 

Jisoo sat up straighter on the bed and kept a stern look on her face. She’d gone over this with herself a thousand times before in her own head. She didn’t Jennie making her anymore confused than she already was. Jinyoung wasn’t her boyfriend, so why shouldn’t she go on a date with Jaebum?

 

“Let me set the record straight,” Jisoo said. “Jinyoung and I were never together, alright?”

 

“I know that, but, I just…” Jennie pursed her lips and gave Jisoo a worried look. “Maybe I’m just going crazy, but I feel like there’s something _more_ there, though. Are you sure you don’t have feelings for him?”

 

“Everything between us is just business,” Jisoo said, the words stabbing her heart even as she said them aloud. She thought about the moment he took the envelope of money from her, how betrayed she felt.

 

“I even paid him last week, so we’re both in understanding of how this arrangement works,” she said. Jennie started to smooth out the wrinkles Jisoo made in her sheets.

 

“I’m just scared that maybe you’re moving on too quickly,” Jennie said. “You never even gave your feelings for him a chance to breathe or grow.”

 

Jisoo cursed Jennie in her head. Her intuition was too good. After Jinyoung kissed her at the party, Jisoo had chosen not to tell Jennie, if only because she was too prideful to admit that she was wrong and that feelings had developed. But ever since paying Jinyoung, Jisoo had been set straight again, so she didn’t a point, anymore, in admitting that she had hoped there was more between them.

 

“It doesn’t even matter. I already know he doesn’t feel way toward me, so why let it grow?” Jisoo said softly. She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and sat beside Jennie.

 

“If I kill it now, the less hurt I’ll be in the end,” Jisoo said. “Look at it like this: if things work out between me and Jaebum, I could have a _real_ boyfriend, not a fake one. I’ve liked him for a long time, you know? But that’s why I need you. You have to help me choose an outfit for Saturday night. Something cute and romantic and little bit sexy, but doesn’t make me look easy. You’ve been on way more first dates than me. Please, help me.”

 

Jennie looked at Jisoo with a sad expression. She had always admired Jisoo for pursuing her dreams wholeheartedly, but she could also be stubborn and insist that she wanted one thing when what she really wanted was something else. Jennie constantly worried that Jisoo was going after all the wrong things, and one day she would realize it and be hurt. But she didn’t want to force Jisoo to change. If she did mend her ways, the realization had to come from within. She had to arrive at the answer on her own. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be real for her.

 

“Fine. Show me your options, I’ll help you choose,” Jennie said. Jisoo smiled and gave her a tight hug. Then she jumped off the bed and Jennie scolded her for messing up her covers.

 

“Just promise me one thing!” Jennie said, grabbing her arm and giving her a stern look. “Jisoo. On this date, _please_ , don’t do your balancing trick. It’s really not as cool as you think.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Cool, right?” Jisoo said as she balanced a water bottle on her head and walked backward at the same time. Jaebum was following behind (or in front?) of her and trying to contain a laugh.

 

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

 

Jisoo thought that the date had gone really well. Jaebum picked her up from her apartment at 6:30 sharp and they made their 7 o’clock reservation just in time. The restaurant was upscale, but not too fancy or uptight. It had a farm-to-table concept, and dinner consisted of a tomato and herb salad to start, beef Wellington as a main course, and for dessert, roasted peaches with ice cream (which Jisoo thought was pretty subpar compared to the peaches she grew up eating, but she kept that thought to herself in case it offended Jaebum.)

 

When they finished, neither was quite ready to go home yet, so they decided to take a walk to the nearby park. It would be empty and more private in the evening, and they were both looking forward to more conversation. Jisoo was learning a lot about Jaebum tonight: that he grew up in the city and knew how to b-boy and liked cats (she was more of a dog-person herself, but it was a minor difference, really.) He was smart and eloquent and amiable and as lovely as Jisoo imagined he would be.

 

Halfway through their walk in the park, Jisoo decided she didn’t care what Jennie thought: she was going to break out the balancing trick anyway.

 

“Wait, I can do it on my shoulder, too,” she said. Jennie had dressed her in an off-shoulder black top and a floral miniskirt, so when she moved her hair aside, she shivered a little from the cold. She put the water bottle on her shoulder carefully and balanced it there.

 

“Ta-da!” she said, and Jaebum shook his head and laughed.

 

“Wow,” he said. “You’re a professional.”

 

“I’m afraid I have to charge you for this performance,” Jisoo said. “I’m a struggling artist who’s gotta eat.”

 

“How much do I owe you for that trick?” Jaebum asked.

 

“$500,” Jisoo joked. “I’m sorry, I’m very in-demand. I have to stay competitive.”

 

“Where did you learn to do that, anyway?” he asked. Jisoo let the water bottle fall from her shoulder to her hands.

 

“I… I grew up on a farm. A peach farm actually,” she said. “During harvest time, my dad let me help pick the ripe ones off and put them in a basket. I wanted to be able to hold more baskets, so I learned to balance one on my head. Water bottles are way easier, though.”

 

“Your dad owns his own business?” Jaebum asked. Jisoo tilted her head. She’d never thought of it that way before, but yes: he did own the farm and the trees and the land and the fruit stand. He owned his own business.

 

“That’s impressive,” Jaebum said. “So, did you decide to get a business degree to help him out after graduation.”

 

“Uhhh,” Jisoo said. “Kind of. I don’t know, the business degree was more his idea. I guess I’ll use it for that.”

 

“It’s a good business to be in right now,” Jaebum said. “These farm-to-table restaurants are becoming more trendy, as are organic diets. Businesses will be looking for more and more independent suppliers. Your dad is in a good place to reap all the benefits.”

 

Jisoo thought of her dad again. Lately, anytime she ever thought about him was with an air of sadness and sorrow. He just seemed so lonely home alone without her or her mom. She hadn’t even thought to ask him how the business was going when she last called. She made a mental note to remember what Jaebum was saying so she could give her Appa some advice during her next call home. It was a good idea, actually. She bet her father had never even considered that. He could contact the restaurant they’d just gone, too, and form a partnership that would significantly improve their peaches and ice cream recipe. If there was one thing her father knew, it was peaches.

 

“Can you balance it on your other shoulder?” Jaebum suddenly asked. Jisoo smirked.

 

“If I do that, I’d have to bump up the price to $1000,” she said. “Hold on.” She moved her hair aside and started walking backwards again. She put the water bottle on her other shoulder, balanced it there, and then gave Jaebum a satisfied smirk. He pretended to applaud her. Jisoo couldn’t believe how much she was actually enjoying herself. Not once did she even start thinking about—

 

Jinyoung. Fuck. She was thinking about him again now.

 

“Jisoo, you’re about to step into the—“ Jaebum tried to warn her. But it was too late. Jisoo took another step backward, and the heel of her shoe sank into a ditch that made her yelp as she fell backwards. A sharp pain shot through her right leg, starting on the outside of her ankle, which twisted awkwardly as she fell. Jaebum was at her side in a minute, asking her if she was alright.

 

“I think so,” Jisoo said, but there was still a dull pain in her ankle and a tightness. It was worse when she tried to move it.

 

“I think you might have sprained it,” Jaebum said, helping her up. Jisoo winced in pain every time she tried to put weight on it.

 

“I think so, too,” she said. Jaebum took his phone out and started looking something up on the screen.

 

“You have health insurance with Eastern, don’t you?” he asked.

 

“Yeah, I do,” Jisoo said. “Should I just go to the campus hospital?”

 

“It’s kind of far away from here,” Jaebum said, looking at a map on his phone. “But, you know, Eastern has a partnership policy with SoTech, students can go to either infirmary for a check-up. SoTech is just around the corner. Let’s just go there and get you checked out.”

 

Jisoo froze.

 

“SoTech?”


	18. Insult to Injury

Jaebum was checking out some of the magazines that the office had put out in the waiting room while Jisoo sat in a chair, fidgeting and pressing an ice pack to her ankle. 

 

He might not even be here, she thought to herself. It was a Saturday night, and it was late, and there was a good chance that this wasn’t even his shift. Of all the ways she had imagined tonight turning out, this was not where she expected it would go. After spraining her ankle, Jisoo had tried to convince Jaebum that she was fine and could just go on home and ice it herself. But he insisted on getting a doctor’s opinion in case anything was broken. 

 

But Jisoo was terrified of running into Jinyoung. It was too soon after the whole payment thing, and she didn’t have enough time to prepare herself, mentally or emotionally, to see him. And considering that she had been distracted enough earlier with thoughts of him to sprain her ankle, she doubted facing him again would do her any further good.

 

“Jaebum, seriously, we can just go,” Jisoo said, trying one last time. “It’s actually starting to feel better, I don’t want to waste the doctor’s time.”

 

“You took a pretty nasty fall,” Jaebum said.

 

Nasty enough that she also had scratches on the back of her elbow and the back of her leg. And if she were telling the truth, her ankle _was_ still throbbing and she was afraid to move it. But all that, of course, was second to the pain in her chest caused by the thought of possibly running into her fake boyfriend. Jaebum put the magazine down and sat back in the chair beside Jisoo. 

 

“Better safe than sorry,” Jaebum said. “If nothing’s wrong, he’ll just say so, but it’s better to just have someone look at it anyway.”

 

He wouldn’t budge, so Jisoo just sank down in her seat, dreading the evening. She was finally put out of her misery when the door to the side of the receptionist’s area opened and her worst fear came true. Jinyoung was standing there, dressed in blue scrubs and holding the clipboard she’d used to sign in. Jisoo tried to hide her face with her hair.

 

“Kim Jisoo,” Jinyoung called out, the way he would any patient’s name when the doctor was ready for them. 

 

At first, when the receptionist handed him the clipboard along with the patient’s chart, he was thought the receptionist was playing a prank on him. And then he was amused. He scanned the clipboard and saw that she was in for a sprained ankle, and he remembered that Nawon had pulled a similar trick on him back then. He felt his heartstrings being pulled. What was this girl trying to do to him?

 

Ever since she handed him the money, he had tried to tell himself it was hopeless and she didn’t see him as anything more than a business partner. That he should stamp out his feelings before he got hurt. But then, seeing her name on the clipboard gave him an unwelcome surge of hope, that maybe she was pulling this stunt because she wanted to see him.

 

And then he saw Jaebum sitting next to her, and those thoughts were canceled. 

 

“That’s you,” Jaebum said, tapping Jisoo on the shoulder and nodding towards Jinyoung, whom he just assumed was the assistant on duty. Jisoo did _not_ want to look up. She didn’t know how Jinyoung was going to react, but she knew it couldn’t be good. 

 

“Jisoo, the doctor’s ready to see you,” Jaebum said again, this time getting out of his seat and helping Jisoo stand up. Jisoo groaned quietly, letting Jaebum take her by the arm as she limped toward the door, closer to where Jinyoung was standing. 

 

He held the clipboard in one hand and his other was clenched in a fist by his side. He was reading the signs: Jaebum and Jisoo together, Jisoo wearing a cute and slightly revealing outfit, her hair curled, Jaebum in a nice shirt and holding her by the arm. He clenched his fist tighter. He felt feverishly hot under his collar. As Jisoo was passing by the doorway, Jinyoung held out his arm with the clipboard, stopping Jaebum from entering.

 

“Just the patient, please,” he said, as calmly as he could muster. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

 

Jisoo finally looked up at him and saw that his face was blank, though there was a tightness in his jaw. Jaebum moved Jinyoung’s arm away.

 

“I’m just helping her into the room, bud,” Jaebum said, but Jinyoung didn’t back away.

 

“ _I’ll_ help her into the room… _pal_ ,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo winced at the poison in his tone. Jinyoung seriously just went jealous-boyfriend on her, _great_. 

 

Jaebum scoffed before surrendering to the doctor’s assistant. He told Jisoo he would wait in the reception area. Jisoo nodded quietly as Jinyoung took her by the arm and led her into the hallway. Once the door closed and Jaebum was out of sight, Jisoo expected Jinyoung to start grilling her. But he didn’t say a word as he helped her limp into another room and helped her sit down in a chair while he looked over her chart. Jisoo radiated with nerves the entire time. Her emotions were all over the place, and Jinyoung was being silent and cryptic. 

 

“Please say something,” Jisoo whispered. Jinyoung just flipped through the clipboard nonchalantly.

 

“Are you allergic to any medication?” he said, his voice mechanic. Jisoo flinched at the frigidity of his tone. He started to make notes on her chart while she fidgeted with her fingers.

 

“Really?” Jisoo said. “You’re gonna be like this?”

 

“The doctor is just familiarizing himself with your chart,” Jinyoung said, still not raising his eyes to meet hers. “He’ll be here soon. Keep that ice on.”

 

And then he just left the room. Jisoo was shocked and confused at his behavior. He couldn’t seriously be upset at her because she sprained her ankle, right? That was partially his fault, she thought since she’d been distracted by thoughts of him when she backed up and off the curb. She intended to give him a piece of her mind, but she couldn’t get up and walk after him because of her ankle, so she resolved to do it when he came back in. But the next person to walk into the room was the doctor himself, followed by Jinyoung, and this hardly seemed like a conversation to bring up with someone else in the room.

 

The doctor gently turned Jisoo’s ankle in a few different directions, trying to determine where the sprain was and if anything was broken. The skin around it was swollen, and Jisoo sucked in a sharp breath when the doctor turned her ankle inward. 

 

“It’s an inverted sprain,” the doctor said aloud while Jinyoung was wordlessly taking notes of her chart. “Did you step off a curb wrong or something?”

 

“Yeah,” Jisoo answered. After a few more tests, the doctor determined that her sprain wasn’t serious. “Though it might be worth it to do an x-ray just to be more sure you haven’t broken anything.”

 

“The radiologist went home for the night,” Jinyoung said, the first words out of his mouth in several minutes. 

 

“You trained with him, didn’t you?” the doctor said to him. “You know how to work the machine?”

 

Jinyoung didn’t say anything for a while and then later gave a nod that was more like a head tilt. The doctor made some more notes on Jisoo’s chart because instructing Jinyoung to take her to radiology room for a quick scan of her ankle. When Jinyoung took her by the arm again, she could practically feel him withholding any and all affection from the gesture. She was started to get annoyed by his petty silent treatment. She had done nothing wrong to deserve this behavior from him.

 

When they were alone in the radiology room, he led her over to the imaging table. 

 

“Get on that,” he said and then turned to start playing with some switches on the wall. Jisoo frowned at him and then looked back at the imaging table. It was too tall.

 

“Is there some kind of stepping-stool I can use to climb up?” she asked. Without even looking back at her, Jinyoung answered:

 

“Just jump up onto it.”

 

Jisoo would have loved to, except she had sprained her ankle, hampering her ability to jump, and she was also wearing a short skirt that was going to make the action tricky. Still, she tried anyway. She put her hands up on the imaging table and tried to pull herself onto it. After two failed attempts, Jinyoung sighed and finally walked over to her. Jisoo was about to say something snarky when he wrapped his arms around her middle and then lifted her up and onto the imaging table. Which, being made of carbon fiber, was freezing against the back of her leg. She landed on it with a grunt.

 

She scoffed. “What is your problem?” she asked while Jinyoung fiddled with the controls again. “Hey, while you’re here, you really should ask the doctor about that stick up your ass.”

 

“Did you really sprain your ankle?” he asked. Jisoo widened her eyes at him.

 

“Is that what it is?” she said. “You think I’m faking my injury? I read an article about this once. Doctors constantly underestimating and writing women off when they—”

 

“Yes or no?” he said, finally looking back and meeting her eyes. He looked angry and annoyed and sad, even, but there was also a faint glimmer of concern. Jisoo pursed her lips.

 

“Yes,” she said. “I really did hurt my ankle.”

 

Jinyoung’s tense shoulders relaxed. “That’s all you had to say,” he said. But Jisoo wasn’t satisfied.

 

“Why would I lie about spraining my ankle?” she said, even though she knew why he had asked. Girls coming into the infirmary with sprained ankles had some special significance to him. Jinyoung didn’t answer though, and the fact that he was ignoring her was starting to hurt.

 

“I’m not Nawon,” she said, and she saw him bristle at the name. “I didn’t fake an injury just so I could come here. I didn’t even know SoTech did a joint health policy with Eastern students.”

 

He finally turned around and leaned against the imaging table, looking up at her. His stare was so intense, it put butterflies in her stomach. 

 

“So how did this happen?” he asked. Jisoo sighed, not wanting to recount the sad tale of how she had ended up spraining her ankle.

 

“I was walking backward—”

 

“ _Why_ do you always walk backward?” he interrupted, sounding frustrated. 

 

“So I can look people in the face when I’m talking to them!” Jisoo snapped, crossing her arms. She thought that was obvious. 

 

Jinyoung scoffed. “Yeah, well look where it’s gotten you.”

 

“Anyway,” Jisoo said. “I was walking backward while doing my balancing trick and I got distracted, my heel fell off the curb, and I twisted it.” 

 

“Your _what_ trick?” Jinyoung asked.

 

“My balancing trick,” Jisoo said and then watched him raised one confused brow at her. “You’ve _never_ seen my balancing trick? Hand me that pill bottle.” 

 

She pointed at a little orange bottle on the counter. Jinyoung grabbed it and handed it to her. Jisoo moved her hair aside and then carefully balanced the bottle on the end of her clavicle. It wiggled a little, but after a little adjusting, she got the pill bottle to sit still on her shoulder. She turned to Jinyoung and raised her brows. 

 

“See?” she said.

 

Jinyoung swallowed to keep from smiling. _Stop acting cute, I’m not happy with you_ , he thought. “Is that supposed to be cool?” he said. Jisoo let the pill bottle drop to her hands and handed it back to him as she rolled her eyes.

 

“Anyway, Jaebum thought it was cool,” she said, and then immediately regretted bringing him into the conversation. Jinyoung felt his heart clench at the sound of that boy’s name. His hands balled into fists against the imaging table. 

 

“Were you on a date with him?” 

 

Jisoo was afraid he was going to ask. Before answering, she told herself that she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Jinyoung wasn’t her boyfriend, he was just a boy who sometimes pretended to be and then in return, she paid him a portion of her paycheck. That she absolutely did not have feelings for him beyond that, and that it was okay that she was on a date with a boy she had crushed on for a while.

 

“Does it matter?” she said.

 

“ _Were you on a date with him?_ ” Jinyoung asked again, firmer this time. He knew there was no point in asking since he already knew the answer. He knew it with just one look at the way she was dressed. But he wanted to hear it, because he was a masochist and a perfectionist, and if he was getting his heart broken tonight, he wanted it to be complete and thorough. Jisoo looked at him with an irritated gaze. 

 

 _Stop it_ , she thought. _Stop making me think you care when you don’t_.

 

“If you absolutely have to know, _yes_ , I was,” she said. Jinyoung swallowed, and he didn’t answer right away. Her words just rung in his ears while he tried to think of something rational to say. 

 

“You really think that was a good idea?” he said. “What if Julie Kiyoko or Dara saw you two walking around?”

 

Jisoo scoffed. Of course, he _would_ bring that up. Trying to protect his source of income, no doubt. 

 

“We weren’t anywhere near the offices, and it’s a Saturday night,” Jisoo answered.  

 

“Oh, because Julie and Dara probably don’t go out on Saturday nights?” Jinyoung said with biting sarcasm. “They just stay in all weekend knitting and watching Wheel of Fortune like grown women who have lives?”

 

“It was under control,” Jisoo argued. JInyoung scoffed and nodded toward her sprained ankle.

 

“Oh, yeah, I see that,” he said. 

 

“There’s really no reason for you to be this upset just because I went on a date with another boy,” Jisoo said, her face burning. “It’s not like you’re my real boyfriend.”

 

Jisoo regretted saying it almost immediately. 

 

She watched Jinyoung’s face for any sign of a reaction, any flash of emotion, but his face stayed blank and he stayed silent. In a second, she thought about the past couple of months she had spent with Jinyoung. It was such a short time to get to know a person, but because they’d known each other before, it wasn’t as if they were strangers starting from scratch. There was no denying that in the short time they spent together, they’d become friends. Even if this was just a business deal, even if he wasn’t really her boyfriend, Jisoo realized that she didn’t want to push him away. But she had a feeling that she just did. 

 

Jinyoung pushed off of the imaging table and kept his face blank. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

 

He didn’t say another word for the rest of the time he took an x-ray of her ankle. He was silent as he put his arm around her waist again and helped her off the imaging table, and he was silent as he made notes.

 

Jisoo wanted to say something to fix the situation, but she didn’t know what she could say. After the doctor confirmed that her ankle wasn’t broken and that it’d be better with time and rest, Jinyoung let her lean on his arm as he led her back out to the waiting room. Jaebum was still there, and as he took Jisoo’s arm, Jinyoung looked no one in the eye. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge, huge, huge disclaimer here - there's probably no way in hell that a doctor would just let an undergrad student operate an x-ray, at least maybe not without professional supervision, so I apologize for the lack of realism in this chapter! I try to let things progress naturally and not force my authorial hand by making unrealistic things like that happen, but then I thought: "what the hell, this is a fan fic, the entire thing is fake anyway, and I really need these two alone together for this conversation, haha."
> 
>  
> 
> P.S. PLEASE SUPPORT JJ PROJECT'S COMEBACK BY STREAMING THE VIDEO/SONG & BUYING THEIR ALBUM! 
> 
> Sorry this note was so long!


	19. Aster Koraiensis

Jisoo was a writer. Or rather, she _used to be._ A writer is someone who writes. But Jisoo wasn’t writing, and she hadn’t written anything in a long time. 

 

She had been to her classes and had been to work, but other than that, she had spent all her time locked up in her room, trying to come up with an idea to present to Dara that would convince her to let Jisoo write the short feature.

 

At present, she was dressed in her nicest suit, which consisted of a red blazer and matching red trousers, into which a white blouse was tucked. She looked like a Valentine as she lay as motionless as a corpse on the carpet. She stared with blank eyes up at the bright, white light on the ceiling while tiny spots of blue and green danced across her vision, and she slipped, slowly, into madness.

 

Around the room, evidence of her fruitless attempts at working. Empty coffee mugs collecting mold sat in one corner of her desk. Her laptop flashed a half-finished document and a YouTube video where a man in glasses was explaining the concept of the banality of evil. On a cork board, she pinned several pictures and clippings from papers, connected by a string like she was trying to solve a conspiracy. Two bottles of wine, one empty and one full, sat by her computer. She had hoped that getting drunk would get her writing faster. She even dressed in her nicest suit, hoping that “dressing for success” would magically invite inspiration into her head. 

 

But alas, there had been _zero_ progress. 

 

Jisoo sat up suddenly and screamed so loudly, it spilled into the hallway, and she could hear someone running toward her room. She grabbed fistfuls of her hair and looked angrily at her reflection in the mirror to her left.

 

_Why can’t I write anything?_

 

In a moment, someone was knocking on her door.

 

“Unni? Is everything alright?” said Rose from the other side of the door.

 

“Don’t come in!” Jisoo shouted, standing up. “I’m writing!” 

 

That was a lie of course. There was 100% no writing happening in that room. Jisoo went back to her desk and began to scroll around the document that was open on one of the screens. Nothing. Nothing of substance. Just a hundred or so small snippets of dialogue or description, a few half-baked ideas that she had typed out after consuming four glasses of wine. But no story, yet, and no sign of one developing anytime soon. Rose knocked on the door again.

 

“Are you sure everything’s alright in there?” the knob turned and Rose herself into the room. Immediately, her nose wrinkled. “What is that smell?”

 

“I’m working!” Jisoo said. She picked up a mug to drink some coffee, but the mug was empty. She sighed and clenched her eyes shut. “What’s wrong with me?”

 

Rose watched as Jisoo leaned over her laptop and highlighted several lines of text and changed the font color to white so that she couldn’t see the terrible ideas she jotted down. Rose walked over to her and leaned down to look at what was bothering her on the laptop screen.

 

“It’s all shit,” Jisoo said. “Shit, all of it! I don’t understand!”

 

“What are you even doing?” Rose said. “Have you left your room at all? I didn’t even know you were in here. You’ve been so distracted the past… I don’t know, two, three weeks?”

 

“It’s this stupid short feature project at work,” Jisoo said, dropping her bottom into her desk chair and groaning. “I really, _really_ want to be put in charge of it, but that’s not going to happen if I don’t prove to Dara that I have the writing chops for it.”

 

“Well, you _do_ ,” Rose said. “I’ve read some of your work, you’re good. Why haven’t you written anything? Haven’t you got any ideas?”

 

“It’s not a matter of having no ideas,” Jisoo said, jumping back to her feet and pacing the room. “I have too many, too many and they’re all competing for my attention but none of them are _the_ story, yet.”

 

 Jisoo turned around to check her reflection in the mirror again. She turned her head and inspected the constellation of pimples that were starting to pop up around her jaw. Dark circles lined her eyes and her hair was in desperate need of a wash. She caught her own gaze in the mirror and she was filled with a deep, overwhelming sense of panic. 

 

“Maybe you need to get out of here for a day or so,” Rose said. “I mean, I’m no writing expert, but holing yourself up in your dingy room can’t be good for creativity.”

 

Jisoo turned her nose up at the thought of leaving her bower, but she was right that _something_ was clogging up her creativity. Even though Jisoo loved writing, she didn’t deny that there were times that it was hard. But it had never been hard like this before. 

 

“Have you… spent any time with Jinyoung at all?” Rose asked all of a sudden. Jisoo bristled at the mention of him. She kept her eyes on her laptop as she answered.

 

“I haven’t heard or seen him in weeks,” Jisoo said flatly. _Not since I twisted my ankle_ , she thought quietly to herself. She didn’t even go to see him directly when she returned his book. She opted to pass it to Jackson when she passed by the Gumiho bar. 

 

“I thought you two were kind of a thing now, though,” Rose said. “Maybe you should call him, see if he wants to hang out. It’d be good to get you out of this room, though maybe you should shower, first.”

 

Jisoo pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead and clenched her eyes shut for a minute. Every time she thought of that night at the SoTech infirmary, her mind was plagued by questions: should she not have asked Jaebum on that date? Should she have fought harder to be brought to a different hospital? Should she have lied and told Jinyoung that she wasn’t on a date? If she did, would the two of them still be okay right now? Had she been too hard on him? Could she have been a little more understanding? Had she lost him for good this time? Had she run out of second chances?

 

 _No. Not this. Not now_. Jisoo couldn’t afford to get lost in those questions right now. Not while her future as a writer was hanging in the balance. Nevermind if she had lost her chance with Jinyoung, she thought. Her feelings for him weren’t _that_ strong, right? After all, Jisoo’s first and only true love would forever and always be writing.

 

Right?

 

Jisoo groaned. “Where’s my lucky flower?”

 

“Your what?” Rose asked. Jisoo darted around her and reached for her work purse. 

 

“You know, the dried and pressed flower I always carry around,” Jisoo said. “It’s sort of like a lucky charm. Anyway, where is it? I think better when I have it.”

 

“Oh,” Rose said, vaguely remembering that Jisoo did keep a bookmark with a dried flower on it. “What’s it look like?”

 

“Uh, well, it’s pressed between two pieces of transparent parchment,” Jisoo said, not finding it in her purse, so she turned to her stack of books. “And it looks like a daisy, except it’s purple and it’s dried up.”

 

Jisoo flipped through all the books she’d read recently, thinking she might have stuck it in there to mark her page. But as each novel turned up empty, she started to panic some more. Where did she put it? Rose joined it, looking around her desk but not finding it. Jisoo started to flip through her things with more frantic urgency. She turned and left the room to search the couch and the kitchen counter and the bathroom. She went into Jennie’s room to check if she had left it there, but it was nowhere to be found. 

 

“Lisa!” Jisoo said, walking back into the living room, where Lisa was reading a magazine. “Have you see my flower bookmark? You’re not hiding it, right?”

 

Lisa shook her head as Rose came in to see about the fuss. 

 

“Why? Did you lose it?” Lisa asked.

 

“Unni,” Rose said. “What’s so important about it, anyway? Just get another floral bookmark, they’re like $5 at the store.”

 

Jisoo gave up searching for the darned thing for a minute to get herself a glass of water. Rose followed her, still asking why it was so important that Jisoo find that flimsy old flower anyway. 

 

“Is it like a family heirloom or something?” Rose asked. “Was it your mom’s?”

 

“No,” Jisoo said, finishing off the glass of water.

 

“Where did you get it, then?” Rose said. “Was it just some art project you labored on for weeks and now you’re determined to actually get some use out of it?”

 

“Someone gave it to me,” Jisoo said, putting her glass in the sink. “When I was a kid.”

 

“Oh?” Rose said. “Who, a boy? Your little elementary school secret admirer?”

 

“No,” Jisoo said, teasingly splattering Rose with water from the faucet. “To be honest, I don’t even know who it was.”

 

She leaned against the sink, remembering how her lucky flower came to her possession. 

 

“It was summertime,” Jisoo started. “It was a few weeks before school was starting, and I was going to transfer to a new school for middle school. The kids at the my old school were a bunch of bullies and they didn’t like me. They used to come to the farmers’ market just to tease me, or they’d ride their bikes to my dad’s fruit stand so they could call me names. It was one of those days.

 

“I was just there, and some of the boys from my school came and started picking on me. I wanted to run away, but my dad said I had to stay and watch the stand while he was doing something. There was also a family there. I think they might have just stopped at the stand on their way back down from the mountain or something. They stopped and the mom bought some stuff from us.

 

“They had kids, I couldn’t be sure how many. But one of them was a boy who was carrying around a handful of these purple flowers. I wasn’t really watching him, but I think he was watching _me_. I remember I was really sad that day because of all the mean kids. But then, as that family was leaving, I was watching them loading back into their car. 

 

“The little boy turned and looked at me, and he dropped one of the purple flowers to the ground before he got into the car. And it wasn’t on accident, it was on purpose. I think he was trying to give it to me.”

 

Jisoo remembered waiting until the car was out of sight to walk across the dirt driveway to pick the little purple flower up off the ground. It was such a small gesture. If she wasn’t paying attention, she would have missed it altogether. She didn’t even know the boy and he didn’t know her. It was such a small thing, it was a _non-event_. 

 

Yet it made her feel a little better that day. It made her feel like the universe wasn’t completely stacked against her. One tiny act of kindness turned into a bright star in the darkness, reigniting her courage to face the next day. She had decided to keep it. 

 

For a little while, she stuck it in a small vase and gave it water and sunshine. But when it became evident that it wasn’t going to last, she decided to press it between two sheets of paper and find a way to preserve it for as long as she could.

 

And she had succeeded. Until she lost it.

 

“That’s kind of an amazing story,” Rose said. Jisoo shrugged, still worried that her precious treasure was lost somewhere in the house and she couldn’t find it. That, and she was still thinking about how she was lacking an idea for a short feature. Something fresh and charming and light-hearted, Julie Kiyoko said, throwing out associational words like “childhood” and “first love” and “memory” and—

 

Jisoo froze. She started rewinding her thoughts, sucking the words she’d just spoken back into her brain and started to twist the images around, started playing with the memory. Something was beginning to take shape. She stared blankly as Rose and then bolted back to her room to grab a paper and a pen. 

 

 

 

 

 

“Maybe you should try calling their Admissions Office or sending an email,” said Jinyoung’s mother over the phone. He was in the middle of studying and cleaning his room when she suddenly called. At first, she scolded him for staying out of contact for so long, and then asked whether or not he’d heard back from any graduate schools. When Jinyoung said ‘no,’ she was concerned.

 

“It’s probably just lost in the mail or something, sweetheart.”

 

It was agony, having to sit and wait for a letter that might never come while he watched his classmates get their acceptances. Spots in med schools across the country and even overseas. Jinyoung was always careful never to let himself get cocky, but he knew that he was one of the best students in the department. So the fact that no acceptance had come for him yet was a source of great stress for him. 

 

But more worrying than that was the fact that, without any acceptances, he had no way to plan the future. He had no way of seeing beyond graduation. He was stuck at a crossroads that had no signs telling him where the path led. And the closer graduation came, the more scared he felt. But if he told his mother this, he knew she would worry. So he put on a cheerful guise.

 

“Or I didn’t get in and they thought it wasn’t even worth it to send a letter letting me know,” he said. “They take my application fee but don’t even bother to tell me I’ve been rejected. It’s like a one-night stand.”

 

“Don’t think that way, Jinyoung,” his mother said sternly over the phone. “Your father wouldn’t like you talking like this.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed as he paced his bedroom. “I’m letting him down.”

 

“You are _not_ ,” his mother snapped at him on the other line. “I happen to know for a _fact_ that if he were alive today, he would be incredibly proud of you and what you’ve accomplished. I know _I_ am.”

 

He laughed a little and then thought fondly of the man who was his father. In a town as small as the one he’d grown up in, it was pretty easy for everyone to know the town fire chief. He was a highly esteemed and respected member of the community, but Jinyoung just knew him as Dad. The man who played with remote-control helicopters with him and taught him how to fish and who would have taught him how to be a man if he had lived this long. 

 

“I miss him,” Jinyoung said softly, leaning against his bed frame. He could hear his mother smiling on the other end. 

 

“So do I,” she said tenderly. “Especially around this time of year. Do you remember we used to all go camping together? Up on… what was that place called?”

 

Jinyoung laughed.

 

“Mt. Sol,” he answered, referring to the mountain at the base of which his hometown resided. His mom laughed again. Jinyoung remembered the last time he was up there with his dad. They had accidentally disturbed a beehive and had to run away, though they ended up with more than few stings anyway. 

 

“We really ought to get up there again, someday,” his mother said. “For old times’ sake. It was so beautiful up there. Where was that site that we always hiked to? The one with the flowers?”

 

“Starry Meadow,” he answered, smiling again, remembering that the last time he was up there was when he wrote his valedictory speech, which ended up winning him the spot and bumping Jisoo down to salutatorian. 

 

“I remember it now,” his mother said. “You picked me a bouquet, do you remember that?”

 

“Did I?” he said, even though he did remember.

 

“The purple ones,” she said. “You were so sweet. You were so careful with them, you kept shooing your sisters away ‘cause you didn’t want to crush them. You even held them when we stopped by the peach orchard, remember?”

 

He did remember. Vividly.

 

“You’ve changed,” his mother said, giggling a little. He smiled.

 

“I grew up and became an angry, idealistic millennial warrior, you mean?”

 

“You’ll always be my baby boy,” she said tenderly. “Try to cheer up, will you? I know you’ll hear back from that school soon. Though if it were up to me, I wish you’d chosen someplace closer to home. I miss you too much.”

 

“I miss you, too,” Jinyoung said, and he meant it. The last time he was home was when he went back for his teacher’s funeral. He’d only spent a day back in his mother’s house and hadn’t even seen his older sisters, one of whom was married and lived with her husband elsewhere. The other was off earning an advanced degree in Europe. With an empty house, his mother felt lonelier than ever. And if he was being honest, so did he.

 

“Call more often, okay?” his mother said as the call came to an end.

 

“Okay.”

 

“I love you.”

 

Jinyoung tossed his phone onto his bed and then let out a slow sigh. A bittersweet melancholy always gripped him anytime he thought of home or talked to anyone from his past, especially now that he was on the cusp of his future. Whatever that future was. 

 

He was raised to be sure of things. Raised to know right from wrong, black from white, up from down, left from right, and he clung to the certainty of rules like a lifeline. But wasn’t sure anymore, not of anything. 

 

When a few minutes had passed, Jinyoung shook himself out of his thoughts and decided that he ought to get back to studying. Med school or not, he still had these upcoming exams to pass. He would worry about the future whenever it decided to come for him. 

 

He sat back at his desk and reached a textbook, but the movement caused everything else on his desk to shift. Some papers and a book fell to the floor, making a clamor that made him flinch. Whoever had the room below him definitely would have heard that. He leaned over to clean up the mess and noticed that the book that had fallen over was none other than _Malice_ by Keigo Higashino. 

 

Jinyoung frowned. He had been on a roll today when it came to keeping his thoughts about her at bay. He didn’t need any more complicated thoughts when he already had his own future to worry about. And she had made it clear that she didn’t want him when she showed up at the infirmary that night.

 

He should have known. Deep down, he knew this about Jisoo. They didn’t get along as children, he didn’t know why he thought it would be any different now that they were older. Although he did sometimes think about the moments they shared in the few months they’d reunited. The gala, the dance, the kiss. It wasn’t all bad, he supposed. 

 

He picked the book up, but then out of it flew a thin wisp of parchment.

 

Jinyoung picked it up, along with the other things that fell. But when he sat up, he brought the folded piece of paper closer to his face. There was a flower between the folded sheets of paper. It had a long, thin stem and its petals were pale purple, arranged around a yellow center like the rays of the sun.

 

 _Aster koraiensis_ , commonly known as the Korean starwort or purple aster, a member of the family _Asteraceae_ , the sunflower family. He recognized it from the pages of a botany textbook. He recognized it because he had seen Jisoo clutching it between her palms on the day they met Julie Kiyoko. 

 

He recognized it because he had once picked a whole bouquet of them to give to his mother. He once "accidentally" dropped one in the driveway of Kim's Peaches and Plums.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates! As you know, I'm starting a new job and right away, I got assigned a big project, so I have been taking care of that. It's quite exciting, actually! I can't give anything away, but I might be interviewing a former JYP idol soon! The details are still super new and there's still a lot to figure out, and I can't really tell you anything until we publish the new issue :/ 
> 
> I may be updating slower from now on because of work, but I'll try to be regular with new chapters. Will also probably be doing some story editing once I finish the whole thing. Thanks for your patience!


	20. Embrace

A week had passed since she finally drafted something that she felt proud enough of to submit to Embrace’s editors. But knowing that if she sent it to Dara, her beloved manuscript would never see the light of day, she had cheated a little by sending her draft straight to Julie instead of going through her most immediate supervisor.

 

Dara was so busy, anyway, Jisoo doubted she would miss it.

 

It was nearing the end of Jisoo’s shift. She was in high spirits as she sat at her work station, reading over submissions and checking the formatting for the proper submission guidelines. It was a quick way to weed out the unlikely ones, since anyone who truly merited being published in Embrace would care enough to make sure their manuscript followed the guidelines. Normally, this was a tedious job. Jisoo would sit at her desk measuring font size and wishing she was doing something else.

 

But today was different. She had actually done something, had actually taken action, and she was glowing with pride in herself and in her work. Measuring text font size no longer felt like a job she only deigned to do. She was happy to be of service.

 

Then it all ended when Dara slapped something down over her work.

 

Jisoo gasped, startled as she looked up and met the ire in Dara’s eyes.

 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Dara shouted, causing everyone in the office to look up at them. Jisoo’s heart started pounding. All at once, she started zooming back through the recent past, making sure she hadn’t messed up on any tasks.

 

“Excuse me?” Jisoo said, shocked and a little scared. Dara leaned in, bringing her furious glare closer to Jisoo’s shaking form.

 

“You think I don’t see you sneaking around behind my back,” Dara hissed. “Snuggling up to Julie and changing your title? What is this? Are you after my job?”

 

Jisoo’s voice shook as she spoke. “What? No! I… I don’t understand what you’re talking about—”

 

“This!” Dara shouted, pushing the stack of paper closer to Jisoo on the desk. “I’m talking about _this_! Look at the byline! Read it out loud, new girl.”

 

Jisoo’s felt frozen in her chair, but she reached a hand out, took the paper from the desk. It was the mock-up of the upcoming issue. For just a moment, Jisoo surged with pride seeing that the story printed on it was the one she had sent to Julie. But then she read from the byline as Dara instructed. Jisoo swallowed.

 

“Kim Jisoo, Editorial Assistant?” she said. She looked up at Dara, who was still seething.

 

“I don’t understand,” Jisoo said. Dara scoffed and leaned in again.

 

“Editorial Assistant?” Dara said, spitting the title out as if it were vinegar. “What game are you playing at? Aren’t you the optimist?”

 

Jisoo looked around at all the people who were staring at the Associate Managing Editor yelling at the new girl. But she still didn’t understand what had made Dara so angry.

 

“But… I _am_ the Editorial Assistant,” Jisoo said quietly. Dara flushed red with fury.

 

“You’re not an editorial assistant _yet_ , missy!” Dara shouted. “You’re just my _assistant,_ my _secretary_!”

 

“Dara, that really is my title,” Jisoo said, trying to keep herself calm, but her heart was pounding and her breathing was getting hot and heavy. “I’ll even go down to HR with you to confirm it—“

 

“Are you calling me _stupid_?” Dara said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at Jisoo. “Do you _seriously_ think that I don’t know my own assistant’s title?”

 

Jisoo swallowed a painful lump in her throat.

 

“But I really _am_ the Editorial Assistant! Julie said—”

 

Dara gripped the edge of her desk as she brought her face dangerously close to hers. Jisoo had never seen Dara so angry.

 

“That’s _Ms. Kiyoko_ to you!” Dara said. The look on her face was so ripe with fury that Jisoo could do nothing but sit in her chair and tremble under her stare.

 

“Stay out of my way, alright?” Dara hissed in a low voice. “This is _my_ job and I worked my pretty little ass off for four years to get here. I gave up too much, and I’m not about to let a naive little piece of plastic like you take this from me. _Stay out of my way_ and _stay in your place_. You’re just an assistant around here, keep your head down and pay your dues like everyone else, or else I’ll _fire_ you. Do you understand? And say goodbye to that short feature project, you’re manning my inbox and fetching my dry cleaning until further notice.”

 

Jisoo pressed her lips together to keep from crying. “You can’t do that,” she whispered.

 

“Can’t I?” Dara said, standing up. “I’m your _supervisor_.”

 

Jisoo felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest as she felt her dream slipping away, crushed under the tyranny of Dara’s supervision. She swallowed again and tried one more time to fight back.

 

“Dara, please,” Jisoo said, voice breaking. “I’m telling the truth. I really _am_ the Editorial Assistant. I’ve been working on the short feature for weeks, I’m—”

 

“Are you _listening to me_?” Dara said. “I already told you: new girls don’t do features. I don’t even want you to go near a word processor until I say you can. Got it? Now, cancel my 3 o’clock and get me a tall skinny latte.”

 

When Dara turned and went back to her office, Jisoo was left behind to choke on the ashes of her rage. She felt everyone in the office looking at her. If Dara had barged into the office and stripped her naked in front of everyone, Jisoo couldn’t have felt more humiliated than she did already. She couldn’t even look down at her own story in the mock-up of the issue and feel any bit of pride. All of it was stripped away in just a few moments of rage.

 

Jisoo tried her hardest to keep it together as she sat at her work station. But her pounding heart wasn’t calming down, and neither was her breathing, and the tears she was holding back were stinging her eyes, and her chest felt tight with all the emotions she was keeping at bay.

 

Giving up, she stood and speed-walked to the women’s room. Once there, Jisoo found an empty stall and locked herself in it.

 

Her legs shook. So did her arms. Her whole body, in fact, shook as she finally let herself have the cry she had been holding back. She cried so hard she couldn’t even breathe and she didn’t care who else in the room could hear her.

 

Her heart was crushed and she felt completely alone.

 

In the middle of her tearful outburst, Jisoo reached for her phone in her pocket. She wanted to call someone. Jennie, maybe, or her father. Everything was falling apart, and she just wanted someone to ground her.

 

 _Call Jinyoung_.

 

Her heart seized up at the thought of him. Jisoo’s brain at once began to present to her all the reasons why she shouldn’t call him, which were numerous and extremely complicated, but her heart had just one reason that won out in the end: she just wanted to hear his voice.

 

So she found his number and dialed it.

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung was in the on-campus lab when his phone lit up with a call from Jisoo.

 

He let out an exasperated sigh. He and his group mates were all there for a group study session, and with exams getting closer, everyone was tense. Everyone was stressed. Everyone was tired. Everyone needed _absolute focus_ from everyone else in the group.

 

But Jinyoung had an odd feeling about this call. She hadn’t contacted him in _weeks_ , and suddenly a call out of the blue?

 

His mind was telling him to ignore it and focus on the study group. Everyone else was working hard, and he should be, too. But in the end, he excused himself from the group and followed his gut sense.

 

Stepping out into the hall, Jinyoung accepted the call.

 

“What is it this time?” he said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.

 

At first, he didn’t hear anything. And then he heard heavy breathing. And then he heard her crying.

 

“Jisoo?” he said, his voice softening at the sound tears. “Jisoo? Hello? You there?”

 

“Jinyoung?” she said with a trembling voice.

 

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

 

“I—,” she started to say, but then a fresh round of sobs attacked her and she couldn’t speak again without choking up. Jinyoung was starting to get worried.

 

“Jisoo,” he said again. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

 

“I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—called, I’m—I’m sorry—”

 

He could hear her voice becoming more distant as she prepared to end the call.

 

“Jisoo, no, don’t!” he called out. “Don’t hang up. Tell me what’s wrong.”

 

Back in the women’s restroom of the Embrace office, Jisoo was pressing her lips together, trying to keep her crying under control.

 

What’s wrong? Jisoo wanted to say that what’s wrong is, Dara wouldn’t let her work on any projects; she hadn’t written anything worthwhile in months and she felt like a failure; working at Embrace was nothing like she had imagined it would be and everyday she felt more and more disheartened by everything; this was the furthest she felt from her dream than ever before; and she had just been humiliated in front of everyone by her boss and she felt broken…

 

 _And to make matters worse,_ she thought, _You’ve ignored me for weeks and I’m sorry about that night at the infirmary and I miss you and I just want everything to be okay between us again._

 

But she didn’t say any of that.

 

“I’m still at work,” she said through the tears. “I’m sorry I called, I don’t know what I was thinking I just—it’s—”

 

And then all at once, it came out:

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jisoo said, tears spilling over anew. “Everything is going wrong, and I don’t—Dara just started yelling at me, and she was just misunderstanding and I—I really am the editorial assistant—I just feel like every time I think something good is happening it gets ruined—”

 

“Jisoo,” he said over the phone, his voice tender. “Do you want me to come to you?”

 

Through the haze of tears and heavy emotions, something like relief suddenly hit and brought with it a little clarity, like a drop of alcohol in the watercolor. Jisoo heaved in a deep sigh during a calm in her sobbing.

 

“Yes,” she whispered.

 

“Meet me in the coffee shop across the street in twenty minutes.”

 

 

 

 

 

Jisoo returned to her work station after her brief crying session in the restroom. When she spotted herself in the mirror, her tears had smeared her eye makeup, so she decided to run her hands under the water and wash it away altogether. She had some semblance of control as she got back and finished up her shift.

 

After twenty minutes, she packed up her things in a hurry and made her way over to the coffee shop across the street. On a weekday evening, it wasn’t very busy. Jisoo ordered herself a cup of tea and found a table close to the wall that was a bit more private than the others. She anticipated that there was a lot between herself and Jinyoung that needed to be said, so a little privacy would be needed.

 

Her heart was still slightly pounding from all the excitement of earlier that evening. If she closed her eyes, she could still picture Dara’s livid expression, could still feel the sting of her words, could still feel the utter humiliation. All of it was crowding around her like a dark cloud, suffocating her.

 

But the air cleared when the door opened, and Jinyoung walked in.

 

He stood at the doorway for a little while, scanning the room, looking for her. When his eyes finally landed on her and their gazes met, Jisoo couldn’t stop her legs from standing up to greet him.

 

And then she couldn’t stop herself from running across the shop, throwing her arms around him, and burying her face in his chest.

 

Jisoo had run to him with so much force that the hug nearly knocked the breath out of Jinyoung. But when he realized what was happening, he softened, and then slowly, he put his arms around her, too. She was crying again, and he started to rub her back, and neither one of them paid much attention to the other customers, who were watching the tender scene unfold.


	21. Teach Me to Dream

Jisoo rubbed her thumb over the side of her cup and ignored the way the heat of the coffee gently burnt her palms. The sting of the heat was kind of comforting. Across from her Jinyoung was sitting quietly, patiently, waiting for her to speak.

 

“I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here,” she said softly, her voice still low and breathy from crying.

 

“It’s fine,” Jinyoung said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

 

Jisoo took a deep breath and shut her eyes for a minute. Her mind was reeling with the memory of Dara looming over her as she screamed. Her heart still had tremors from the moment. But she opened her mouth and decided to begin as slowly as she could and ease into it.

 

“I wrote a short story for the upcoming issue’s feature,” Jisoo said.

 

“You did?” Jinyoung said, leaning forward a bit. “That’s… great.”

 

Jisoo nodded.

 

“I was supposed to submit it to Dara, she’s my supervisor,” Jisoo said, pausing to drink from her cup. “But I knew she said that new girls aren’t supposed to write features, so I thought if I sent it straight Julie, I might actually have a chance of being published.”

 

The cafe they were sitting in was playing soft, acoustic music and the lighting was dim. Jinyoung was looking down at Jisoo’s hands as she spoke, watching wordlessly as she ran her thumb over the knuckles of her other hand in a comforting gesture. He resisted the urge to reach out and let his own hand take over the task.

 

“She must have liked it since she included it in the mock-up,” Jisoo continued, furrowing her brows as she tried to keep her emotions in check.

 

“But Dara got the copy just now,” she said, her voice breaking again. She wiped at a stray tear. “And she just—exploded at me, I don’t know. She accused me of going behind her back and trying to take her job when I really just wanted a chance to show her I could be trusted with bigger responsibilities—”

 

“Hey. Shh, calm down—”

 

“Instead of just calling _printers_ and fetching _coffee_ and reading through submissions,” Jisoo said. “I was just trying to _help_.”

 

“I know you were.”

 

Willpower giving out, Jinyoung reached across the table and touched Jisoo’s knuckles softly, hesitantly with his fingers. Jisoo looked down at their almost-touching hands and swallowed. She slowly took her hand from the cup and turned her wrist until the backs of her fingers were leaning into the curve of his palm.

 

His hand was warm. Not as warm as the coffee in her cup, but it was soft and warm and felt worlds better.

 

“You were right,” Jisoo whispered.

 

“About what?”

 

“Maybe Embrace isn’t where I’m meant to be,” Jisoo said, her eyes gleaming with the tears-strained lashes. “I don’t belong there. It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be.”

 

It was disheartening.

 

“All my life, I’ve read Embrace and imagined being counted as one of their writers,” Jisoo said. She dreamed of joining the ranks of acclaimed novelists who’d got their start by working at Embrace.

 

“But since I started there,” she continued. “All I’ve done is monitor Dara’s inbox and sit in on meetings.”

 

Though, of course, she was _grateful_. If she wanted to get _anywhere_ , she had to start _somewhere_. But still, Jisoo wanted… more.

 

In her dreams, she pictured herself in the many years ahead living somewhere far and remote. Perhaps in a cabin on a mountain, where she’d be alone except for a dog maybe, where she’d have her books and a comfortable chair and a window with a view of a wide meadow, where she could write peacefully.

 

It was simple, really. Just a quiet house somewhere where she could write. Yet the path towards that dream was murky and came with endless perils, and at the moment she couldn’t even see it clearly.

 

“I’m losing sight of it,” she said after a beat of silence. “I always thought of myself as someone who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. But now, I’m not so sure about anything.”

 

Even though she had spent years cultivating her writing, nothing made Jisoo more terrified than a blank piece of paper. Even more terrifying now, however, was seeing the scrolls of her future suddenly turning into blank pages as her plans came undone. Panic set in again. She. Had. No. Plan.

 

 

 

 

 

Jisoo and Jinyoung stayed at the cafe until closing time, but even then Jisoo didn’t want to back home yet, and Jinyoung didn’t want to leave her alone.

 

So they ended up wandering the city and ended up climbing the hill upon which rested the central radio tower, glowing bright blue against the night sky. From the walking path along the hillside park, the city whirred and writhed in neon and fluorescent unrest. Cars zoomed in and out through wide and narrow streets. Windows glowed in tall buildings, turning on and then turning off like a switchboard with lights.

 

One thing she missed most about home were the stars. In their semi-rural hometown, it was dark enough at night that she could look at the sky and see stars. But here in the city, there were too many buildings and too many cars and too many people. There were no stars in the sky, but the city lights below were a nice consolation prize.

 

Jisoo felt a kind of calm taking over her.

 

She didn’t say a word as they walked along the path, looking over the railing at the swirling, iridescent light show below that was their city. When she first moved here, she was nervous. In their sleepy hometown, almost everyone knew each other. When she went away for college, the city swallowed her up and for the first time she felt what it was like to be small.

 

But in time, she realized she actually kind of liked feeling small. 

 

She liked the freedom that came with the ability to fade into the background and move unseen. She liked feeling immersed in the vast, bottomless ocean of stories that was their city, both observer and recorder.

 

The path of a writer was often a solitary one.

 

When Jisoo wrote her stories, she always wrote alone. Jisoo had spent a lot of time hiding out in her room, pounding out words on a keyboard, hiding from the world. Yet it was a comfort knowing that even while she was deep in the world of her own mind, the real world still swirled and turned and would be there to greet her when she emerged.

 

Maybe that was why for so long she never noticed that she was lonely. She realized it only now, standing by the railing, watching the city lights from the dark side of the hill and thinking about all the lives being lived around her.

 

Then suddenly Jinyoung was at her side, leaning against the low stone wall and looking out at the city with her. She noticed that he was rubbing his arms, and it occurred to her that it was the middle of the night and she had called him out here out of the blue and he didn’t even have a jacket.

 

“Are you cold?” she asked. Jinyoung stopped rubbing his arm for a minute and turned to her.

 

“No,” he said and then smiled to assure her. “It’s actually a really warm night. I… I just have a fidgeting habit.”

 

It _was_ a warm night, actually. Summer was coming, and the sun was setting later and its heat lingered in the air well into the night.

 

“How long are you planning on staying out here?” Jinyoung asked. Jisoo laughed simps because she didn’t how else to react to the suddenness of the question.

 

“You don’t have to stay with me,” she said playfully. “You can leave if you want to.”

 

Jinyoung raised a brow as he turned to face her. “If you’re so determined to get rid of me, why’d you call me in the first place?”

 

Jisoo paused for a minute, trying to think of something clever to say, but in the end, she decided that what she really wanted to tell him was the truth.

 

“I just wanted to talk to you again,” she said. “I like talking to you.”

 

Jinyoung was caught off-guard by her answer. He was under the impression that they were settling back into their usual playful banter, but she had hit him instead with a candid reply. He blushed and tried not to look as affected as he was.

 

“How did those words taste coming out of your mouth?” he said, joking. Jisoo smiled and giggled.

 

“Not as bad as you think,” she said, pushing off the wall and starting to walk along the path. Jinyoung fell into step beside her. Despite the warmth of the evening, there was a gentle breeze that made the bushes and the branches sway. The park was empty besides the two of them, and it was so quiet, Jinyoung could hear their breaths starting to synchronize.

 

“When was the last time you went home?” Jisoo asked as they neared an old traditional pavilion. Jisoo hopped up onto the benches and walked alongside Jinyoung who stayed on the ground.

 

“A few months ago,” Jinyoung said. “For Mr. Hong’s funeral.”

 

Jisoo stopped at the edge of the bench.

 

“Oh. Right,” she said, wishing she’d had more tact to remember. “What was it like?”

 

Jinyoung took Jisoo’s hand and guided her down as she hopped off the bench and back to the ground. Their hands stayed holding each other a beat longer than usual.

 

“Going back?” Jinyoung said as he took his hand from her. “I mean, it’s not as if I don’t go back every few months, during the summer and during breaks. It’s kind of surreal, I guess. It’s a place filled with a lot of memories. It’s a place where a lot of things got started.”

 

Jisoo smiled fondly, remembering home. Yes, it was a place where many things had their start. She thought of her old reading nook back home. The worn couch beneath the clothing line at the edge of the orchard. The endless summer afternoons, the hot breeze that blew the smell of peaches and linens past her as she curled up with a novel or two. It was the place where her dream of becoming a writer was born.

 

She looked over at Jinyoung, who was still walking beside her and had a fond smile on his face, too. She suddenly wished with all her might that they had been friends in middle school and high school. She wished she wasn’t such an idiot back then. She wished that she knew him when he was a boy. She wished she could know everything about him.

 

“Did you always want to be a doctor?” Jisoo asked. Jinyoung looked up and looked mildly surprised. He started to rub his neck as he looked up, remembering.

 

“No,” he said after thinking about it. He laughed.

 

“Actually,” he said. “For a while, I wanted to be a policeman or a firefighter.”

 

Jisoo smiled. That much, she knew. “Like your dad,” she said. She and her father weren’t in town often, but she at least knew Officer Park, the chief fireman of the town. He was a well-known figure in their hometown. She remembered the tall, ruggedly handsome man who had a deep, full voice and a friendly smile.

 

Jinyoung nodded. “Yeah. Exactly like him,” he said, smiling. “You might be disappointed to learn that I subscribed to that stereotype of being the little boy who idolized his dad.”

 

Jisoo laughed. “And why wouldn’t you?” she said. “Everyone in town idolized your dad. He was a hero. He saved that girl’s life.”

 

Jisoo hopped onto a bench again, but this time Jinyoung jumped onto it with her. Feeling the extra weight, she turned and found their faces almost touching. She took a cautious step backwards and Jinyoung looked like he was going to reach out for her, to make sure she didn’t fall backward.

 

“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Jisoo asked. “The saving lives part. _That’s_ what attracts you.”

 

Jinyoung took a deep breath. He jumped down from the bench and sat on it instead.

 

“That’s definitely a big part of it,” he said. Jisoo stepped down and sat beside him. For a minute he looked at her face and didn’t speak. He looked like he was thinking.

 

“But another part of it is just that becoming a doctor will be one of the hardest things I’ll ever do,” he said. “Four years as a biology student, four years of med school, residencies that can last anywhere between three and eight years. An average physician trains an average of fourteen years for the job, that’s a _lifetime_.”

 

He suddenly stood up and walked forward a little before stopping and putting his hands on his hips. Jisoo stayed sitting on the bench and watch his back as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

 

“What my dad did for the town was honorable,” he said. “He saved lives. For a while, I thought I’d be content just to be like him.”

 

Back then, Jinyoung had believed that being like his dad meant following in his footsteps, joining the fire brigade and then slowly and faithfully working his way up the ranks and then serving the town the way his father did. But somewhere in his youth, his thinking changed.

 

“But then in high school, I realized that I could do even more,” he said. “That I _wanted_ more. Actually—,”

 

Jinyoung paused and then turned to look at Jisoo, who was still sitting and watching him.

 

“Actually, _you_ made me realize that,” he said.

 

Jisoo blushed immediately under his gaze. Such a confession, she was flustered. “Me?” she said. “How? We weren’t even _friends_.”

 

Jinyoung laughed as he took a step toward her.

 

“Yeah, but—” he said, thinking about the past. “I was perfectly fine being my B-average self, until _you_ came along and turned literally everything into a competition.”

 

Jisoo scoffed, unable to believe that the conversation had come to this again. Though recently, they were now able to recall those silly days without reviving the hard feelings that used to come with them. Jinyoung laughed, recalling those days.

 

“If I studied my ass off and got an A- on a test, you’d study even harder and get an A+ on the next one,” he said. “ _Every time_ I thought I checked you, you pulled some new trick out and turn the tables on me. I had to work harder than my hardest just to stay ahead of you.”

 

And then suddenly the playfulness in his eyes faded away and as he looked at her, it was replaced by an emotion that Jisoo couldn’t quite place. But the way he was looking at her made her want to combust. It was so… gentle.

 

On Jinyoung’s end, he was feeling weightless. Sure, he had always thought she was cute when they were kids, but this was the first time he was realizing that her impact on his life went beyond the scope of his little childhood crush. She was his rival, his foil, his mirror image, the reason he woke up every morning ready to fight.

 

“You kept me on my toes,” he continued. “You… you made me see that I was capable of more than good. Made me _want_ to be more.”

 

“Remember when he had to write speeches for graduation?” he said. “Whoever’s speech was better would be valedictorian?”

 

“Yes, I _do_ remember,” Jisoo said, smirking. “I remember you stealing what was rightfully mine.”

 

Jinyoung laughed. “That was the scariest thing I ever had to do. Write a speech and then deliver it? And knowing that I was going up against _you_ , the town’s own future Nobel laureate in literature? I knew I was fucked from the beginning.”

 

Jisoo watched his face as all the emotions of that moment came back to him. Jinyoung swallowed and then spoke slowly.

 

“Knowing that I took a risk and laid everything bare,” he said. “And did something that scared me and seeing it pay off… that was the proudest moment of my life up to that point.”

 

A smile spread across his face and Jisoo felt its warmth seeping into her.

 

“Becoming a doctor, this path that I’m on,” Jinyoung said, looking back out at the city lights. “It scares me. But that’s why I want to do it. It’ll be the most worthwhile thing I’ll ever do.”

 

He was practically glowing. The heat radiating from him was making the warm night even warmer. Jisoo smiled. She bet his heart was pounding, too. Hers always did when she thought about why she wanted to be a writer. They were more alike than she ever realized, and again she felt a pang of regret that they wasted so much time hating each other as children.

 

“No offense to you, of course,” Jinyoung said, taking the seat beside her again. “You were a formidable opponent, you wrote an amazing speech.”

 

Jisoo scoffed. “Yours was better,” she said. “I was overconfident, it made me careless. A fatal flaw. One of my _many_ flaws, actually.”

 

Jisoo looked away at the lights again while Jinyoung studied her face.

 

He wasn’t supposed to want to be a doctor. The plan was for him to join the fire brigade like his dad and stay home, take care of his mother, eventually marry some girl, have his own children, and settle down forever in the town that he’d grown up in and would eventually die in. But competing with Jisoo made him realize that he was capable of thinking bigger. That he was capable of Southern Technical and capable of med school and residencies and careers in hospitals or opening his own practice.

 

She taught him how to dream.

 

He looked at the girl sitting on the bench, with her tired eyes and remembered the first time he’d ever seen them, wide with wonder. And he remembered just how hard he had fallen for her back then. And then he felt terrified as he realized just how hard he was _still_ capable of falling.

 

“Maybe I shouldn’t do this,” she said out of the blue.

 

“Do what?” Jinyoung asked.

 

She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. In the thick silence that followed Jinyoung’s talk, Jisoo’s stubborn mind made her remember Dara’s outburst. There was a time when Jisoo felt the same kind of determination that Jinyoung had as he chased after his dream, but now she was starting to think that maybe this wasn’t for her after all.

 

“Maybe this is a sign from the universe,” she said with a heavy hart. “That I’m not supposed to _be_ a writer. Maybe this was just a—a phase I had to go through to realize that who I _think_ I am isn’t really _me_ , that I’m just—that I shouldn’t—”

 

“Jisoo.”

 

He had taken her hand again. Jisoo looked at him and the deepest sadness she had ever seen graced his handsome face. He held her gaze and didn’t let it go.

 

“Don’t give it up. _Please_ don’t,” he whispered.

 

Jisoo’s breath caught as she let out a sigh. Jinyoung still wouldn’t let her look away from him. He held her hand firmly.

 

“If someone as talented and dedicated and passionate as you can’t reach her dream, then there sure as hell isn’t any hope for someone like me,” he said. “You’re the reason I’m here. I never would have made it this far, never would have gone to SoTech, never would have applied to some of the best med schools in the country if it weren’t for you.”

 

And then he smiled and it broke her heart.

 

“I still think you can do it.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was getting too late. By the time they realized just how long they’d spent aimlessly wandering the hillside park, it was just past midnight.

 

Even Jisoo was trying hard to get past her feelings of despair after the events of her past work day, she came down from the hill feeling light. They walked along in silence down the streets of their city and then turned a corner into the quieter residential areas.

 

Jinyoung walked by her side, their arms just an inch apart as they strolled down the street. But their steps were in sync and so was their breathing, and Jisoo had never felt closer to him. And he wasn’t doing a damn thing except breathing and walking beside her in the same direction. She felt her spirit thrumming with joy at having made a real connection with another person.

 

As they made their way through the summer night, memories of the short time they had spent together these past few months burst like stars upon her. She wanted to reach out and touch him, and then she held herself back, afraid that one wrong move might make this perfect night shatter into a million pieces that would scatter across the globe. Even then, she was sure, in that moment, that if that happened, she’d spend her lifetime collecting those pieces just to have another night like this.

 

When the door of her apartment came into view, her spirit sunk. Was all of it supposed to just end so plainly like this?

 

Jinyoung walked her to the door. Jisoo stood in front of it wordlessly before turning back to him.

 

“Um,” Jinyoung said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are we okay now?”

 

He meant to ask if _she_ was okay, but his words slipped.

 

But then the damnedest thing happened: she kissed him.

 

Before he even had a chance to realize what was happening, Jisoo leaned forward and gave him a soft, soft, _heart-achingly_ soft kiss on the lips. A shock of electricity coursed through him.

 

She stayed there for just a second before pulling away. He had a look on his face that was hard to read. Confusion? Desire? Shyness? Jisoo began to panic. Had she done something wrong? Should she not have done that?

 

It was the quickest, softest, most innocent kiss he’d ever been given in his life. He had been kissed before, but he _swore_ that this felt like his first _real_ one. And it was his undoing.

 

Jinyoung leaned forward, caught Jisoo’s lips on her inhale, and he kissed her; kissed her long, slow, deep. He could feel her tense up at first contact, but she softened against his touch. He felt like his heart had suddenly gone into overdrive, and he _had_ to kiss her or else it would burst and kill him. Like the earth had cracked open beneath his feet and he had to hold onto her to keep from being swallowed up by darkness.

 

A million thoughts came rushing to Jisoo’s head: conversations they still needed to have, things that happened in their past, reasons why she shouldn’t be doing this. But she shut her mind off to every single one of them and chose _this_ moment— _this world_ —to live in.

 

He felt her trying to move her lips according to his rhythm, felt her smile against his him, felt her breath catch and her heart skip a beat when he slanted his mouth and touched her tongue with his.

 

One of his hands curled around her face while the other pressed against the small of her back, pulling her closer. Jisoo pressed her hands flat against his chest, and she could feel his heart racing beneath her palms.

 

She was nervous, he could tell. He remembered their first kiss, the one he’d given her under the scrutiny of her coworkers and her supervisors. She had been tense and nervous then, too. Jinyoung pulled away for a second to let Jisoo breathe, pressed his forehead against hers, breathed in her air. And then he kissed her again.

 

She was more confident this time. Jisoo reached up and hooked wrists around the back of his neck, afraid that her knees might give out in the middle of it all, and then used the extra support to press her body more firmly against his. One of his hands ran down her side, sending a shiver through her.

 

Jinyoung pressed his body more firmly against hers. How long they stayed there, kissing, he couldn’t say, but it wasn’t long enough. Even though by the time they separated, they were both gasping for air and holding each other as if to stay upright.

 

A thousand thoughts and emotions started flooding into Jisoo in the few breathless moments that came after the kiss. There were so many questions and worries and concerns and things she was uncertain of, all of it reeling through her mind. But her heart had no room left to entertain these silly matters. Her heart, right now, was completely full.


	22. Even Better

Jisoo stared down hard at her notes, trying not to look up and risk getting caught in the crossfire of Julie and Dara’s argument. The two women had been yelling at each other for all of five minutes, but the energy in the room got so tense that Jisoo felt like it had gone on for ages.

 

It all started when Dara laid down her three picks for the short feature, which included a draft that she’d written herself. Jisoo had read it before. She was still a bit sore about Dara humiliating her in front of the staff, so she had read Dara’s draft begrudgingly, but she was thoroughly impressed by the quality of her writing. She had written a short, dark romance that would’ve made Emily Bronte blush with embarrassment. But it was still a far cry from what Kiyoko wanted.

 

Julie said that she wanted a short feature that was going to match the new, light, simple vibe of the redesign. She had even brought out a mock-up of what the cover would look like. Jisoo was used to nodding her head and agreeing with what Julie said, but this time around, she had to side with Dara, who called the new design infantile. 

 

Then the yelling started. 

 

Julie insisted that change and adaptation were necessary to attract new readers and stay afloat in an industry that was going increasingly digital and to rebrand the romance genre and make it more appealing.

 

Dara agreed with all that, but she felt it was more important to keep the journal’s original integrity by staying committed to championing high-quality writing, writing that embodied all the best that the romance genre had to offer and all that it could be.

 

Julie said that championing good writing didn’t mean that the magazine had to be boring.

 

Dara countered saying that the bubbly font and bright colors put too much emphasis on the design and took attention away from the words themselves. 

 

Then Julie called Dara a stifling traditionalist with no sense for what today’s audience wanted. So then Dara called Julie a sell-out who’d lost touch with Embrace’s original vision. 

 

And the yelling sort of just went from there, and Jisoo had stopped paying attention, opting instead to devote all her interest to the ink drying on her notepad. She was beyond relieved when Seungri walked in, needing the conference room for a Skype call with Jeon & Sky’s editor-in-chief. 

 

Dara and Julie exited the room, still stiff with tension and Jisoo hurried to her desk, wanting to get out of that toxic atmosphere as fast as she could. She was no stranger to Dara’s ire, but Julie Kiyoko’s explosive outburst seemed to have come straight out of left field. The two women had never been anything but professional to each other. Only today did Jisoo realize that there must be more tension between them than they let on. 

 

Jisoo didn’t know what to make of the scene she just witnessed. Nor did she really know whose side she was on. As little as she cared for Dara, Jisoo didn’t deny that she had made some valid points. Jisoo had been supportive of the redesign in general, being a firm believer that change could be a good thing and that it was important to woo new readers. But Dara was also right about preserving the integrity of Embrace’s vision of legitimizing the romance genre. It was, after all, what had made _her_ start reading it in the first place. 

 

Dara came storming out of her office again, and Jisoo bristled. Ever since Dara’s outburst, Jisoo had been walking on eggshells around her all week. But Dara ignored her completely and instead went to grab a cup of coffee from the break room. Jisoo relaxed her shoulders. On her desk, her computer screen was open to an email to a potential new writer. Dara had tasked her with replying to all new inquiries, pretending to be Dara, and telling them that unfortunately their submission box was closed until the next cycle. 

 

That was when Jisoo noticed Julie Kiyoko walk into Dara’s office. 

 

“Ms. Kiyoko?” Jisoo asked, taking her hands from the keyboard and standing up. Julie whipped around and stared at Jisoo through the open door of Dara’s empty office. She looked slightly alarmed.

 

“Yes, Jisoo?” Ms. Kiyoko said. Jisoo wondered why she looked so jittery. It wasn’t like Julie at all to be anything other than professional. Though she supposed that facade had come crumbling down in the conference room just minutes earlier.

 

“Dara just went to the break room to get coffee,” Jisoo said, walking toward the door. Julie clenched her fists. 

 

“Oh,” she said. “Is that right?”

 

Jisoo leaned against the doorframe. “Did you need something from her? Should I tell her to look for you when she gets back?”

 

“No!” Julie snapped. And then flashed her usual sweet smile. “No, that won’t be necessary,” she said, giggling. “I just came here to see if I left my phone in here when I came in. That’s all.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said, still not quite sure to make of Julie’s strange behavior. “Maybe it’s in the conference room. I noticed you using it during the meeting.”

 

“Of course, I’ll check there,” Julie said, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “Thank you so much, Jisoo. I’m sorry about what you had to hear back there. We’re usually much more put together.”

 

“It’s no problem,” Jisoo said, smiling with half her mouth. “Everyone loses their cool sometimes.”

 

Julie’s smile looked frozen. “That’s right,” she said. “You of all people must know best how… difficult it is to work with her.”

 

Jisoo’s smile faded and she looked nervous. “Oh, god, that’s not what I meant at all!” Jisoo said, waving her hands. “Dara’s… I mean, everything is alright… I didn’t mean to—”

 

Their conversation was cut short when Dara appeared behind Jisoo in the doorway, holding a mug of fresh coffee. She threw a curious look at both the women and Jisoo hurriedly excused herself back to her work station. She saw her two managing editors exchange a few words before Julie, too, ducked out of Dara’s office and returned to her own. Jisoo avoided looking in Dara’s direction the rest of the day. 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of Jisoo’s shift passed without much more excitement. She finished sending the emails and signed off on each one pretending to be Dara, then she set up an appointment for Dara to meet with the Jeon & Sky Board of Directors and input some numbers from a readers’ survey into an Excel sheet and even got Dara’s coffee mug a refill. 

 

When six o’clock came, she packed her things back into her purse and bid the rest of her office mates goodbye. As she was stepping out of the elevator and walking through the lobby, she happened to check her phone. She had no calls or messages. 

 

She tried to tell herself to calm down, that it had only been two days, and even though Jinyoung was special, he was still a college-age boy and he was probably doing that stupid thing where he waits three days to call a girl back after making out in front of her apartment. Still, she was frustrated. How could he just give her the kiss of her life two nights ago and not have the decency to even text?

 

“Oh, excuse me,” Jisoo said, as she pushed the glass doors open and accidentally hit someone with the edge. When the person turned, it was Julie Kiyoko. Jisoo felt even more embarrassed.

 

“That’s alright,” Julie said, putting on her signature smile. She scooted over and let Jisoo step out of the building. The days were getting longer, so it was still bright out even though it was dinner time. Julie Kiyoko was standing on the side of the building.

 

“Are you trying to hail a cab?” Jisoo asked.

 

“What? Oh, no,” Julie flashed a pink valet ticket at Jisoo. “I’m waiting for my car, the valet will bring it around in a minute.”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said. For a second, she thought about sticking around for a bit because she was curious what kind of car Julie Kiyoko, Embrace Managing Editor, drove. Would she have a sensible midsize sedan or a fancy sports car with more horsepower than she could even legally use on the streets of their city? 

 

“Can I ask you a sensitive question?” Julie suddenly asked. Jisoo’s eyes grew wide.

 

“Uh, sure, I guess?”

 

Julie smiled. “What do you think of Dara?”

 

Jisoo stared at Julie’s face blankly.

 

“Is this a test?” Jisoo asked. Was this some sort of trick? Was she trying to get her to talk shit about Dara, and then Dara would jump out of nowhere, revealing that this was a set-up and she’d heard every dirty word out of Jisoo’s mouth? Julie just laughed.

 

“No, I want your honest opinion,” she said. “Don’t hold anything back.”

 

“Oh. Okay, well,” Jisoo said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Dara’s… a very _firm_ kind of person. She’s really committed to the journal and what it stands for… um… she… well, she has… really particular taste in coffee… she could really use a two-week vacation…”

 

Jisoo’s voice trailed off as she saw the smirk on Julie’s face.

 

“Jisoo,” she said. “Neither you nor I are exactly fond of her. Let’s stop pretending. Tell me what you really think.”

 

Jisoo searched and searched Julie’s face for a sign of joking, but there was none. She sighed and confided in her:

 

“Honestly,” Jisoo said. “I’m not her biggest fan. I’ve read her writing and she’s really good, amazing. But… she is a little stingy when it comes to feedback and supporting the junior staff. She’s snappy and hard to please, and she seems really scattered, though maybe because she’s so stressed—”

 

“What about the discussion we had today in the meeting room?” Julie pressed. “Who did you think was right?”

 

Jisoo dreaded the question. She didn’t want to take sides since she thought both of them had good points. But she figured since it was Julie who asked, she may as well try to be amenable.

 

“I think you were right about the redesign,” Jisoo said, mustering as much confidence as she could into her voice. “If the journal is going to survive and grab new readers, it has to rebrand.”

 

That must have been exactly what Julie wanted to hear because her sticky sweet smile came back, though it looked a little different this time. 

 

“I’m glad you’re on my side,” she said in a low voice. She reached forward and gave Jisoo’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. As a car rounded the corner of the street and stopped in front of them, Julie Kiyoko leaned in and whispered into her ear:

 

“Let’s have a talk tomorrow,” she said. “I want to discuss your future with Embrace.”

 

As Julie pulled away and walked toward her car (a sensible black sedan,) Jisoo felt flushed with excitement. She stood and watched as Julie drove off into the night, and she couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come. If Julie wanted to discuss her future with Embrace, Jisoo thought that it must mean that she was going to promote her soon. 

 

 _Oh my god_ , Jisoo thought, practically shaking from the thrill of it. Such _fantastic_ news! Could this evening get any better?

 

“Hey!” 

 

When Jisoo turned around and saw Jinyoung standing on the sidewalk, a stupid smile burst across her face.

 

 _I guess it_ can _get better_!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After getting dinner at an Italian place, Jinyoung said that there was something he wanted to do, so he led her back down to the station and hopped on a train. By the time they emerged from the station, night had fallen. 

 

“Pop quiz,” Jinyoung said. He was carrying her briefcase in one hand as they ascended the stairs, and Jisoo purposefully let him walk a little bit in front of her because she liked seeing the back of him. 

 

“Pop quiz?” Jisoo said.

 

Jinyoung looked back at her and smirked. “You ready? Here’s the question: where did we have our first date?”

 

Jisoo looked confused. “What?”

 

“You have five seconds to answer.”

 

“Wait!”

 

“Two seconds.”

 

“Umm—“

 

“Time’s up,” he said, laughing. “You don’t remember? I’m disappointed after you stayed up until three in the morning writing our story, you don’t remember our ‘first date?’”

 

Jisoo followed him as he walked along the sidewalk and then stopped at a crosswalk light. Even though the nights were getting warmer, it was somewhat cooler here and the breeze was a little damp. When she looked up ahead of her, she realized that they were at the river. She laughed, suddenly realizing what he was talking about.

 

“What are we doing here?” Jisoo said. “Don’t tell me: we’re here to recreate our fictional first date?”

 

When the light changed and people started to cross the street, Jinyoung took her hand and led her over to the other side. Jisoo felt giddy. When they were on the side of the street that ran along the riverbank, Jinyoung looked at her and she had never noticed how cute with crinkly eye-smile was. Recreating that fictional date was _exactly_ what happened.

 

They rented a pair of bicycles and followed the trail downriver. Jisoo wished he had told her the plan earlier, so she could have brought clothes to change into. The wind was thrashing her blouse and it came untucked as they rode downhill. When the trail started to get less crowded, Jinyoung tried to race her. 

 

When they stopped to take a break, Jisoo accidentally scraped her leg against the bike chain and her calf came away with a small scratch. So they biked again to a riverside convenience store and bought a bandage to put over it. Jisoo, feeling shy, tried to insist that she could take care of it herself, but Jinyoung insisted that he was the one training to be a doctor, so scrapes and cuts were more _his_ department. 

 

“You’re _such_ a perv,” Jisoo joked, punching his arm jokingly. “You just want to look at my legs.”

 

He just laughed in response and then tossed the band-aid wrapper into a nearby bin. They returned their bikes at this point and decided to make the rest of their way on foot. A nearby food truck was selling shaved ice, so they bought one to share as they walked along the water.

 

“Wait, there’s something I _need_ to talk to you about,” Jisoo said all of a sudden. Jinyoung had just finished putting a spoonful of red bean into his mouth when Jisoo turned to him with her brows creased in seriousness. He felt nervous suddenly.

 

“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “What is it?”

 

Jisoo stopped walking, stood with her feet together, and point her plastic spoon at him.

 

“ _Malice_ ,” she said. “I have _so_ many thoughts.”

 

Jinyoung started laughing.

 

“What’s so funny?” Jisoo said.

 

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just… I thought you meant like a different kind of talk. Anyway, what about it? Did you even read it?”

 

“I’m offended!” Jisoo said, wagging the spoon at him again as they strolled on with a leisurely pace. “Of course, I read it! Twice, in fact. Would’ve been three times, but I gave it back to you before I could finish. I left off at the part where we get to Nonoguchi’s written account of the crime.” 

 

Jinyoung smiled.

 

“That’s what you want to talk about?” he asked.

 

“I asked all my roommates, even some people at the office,” Jisoo said. “Damned romance writers never get their heads out of that happily-ever-after shit long enough to even consider reading other genres. You’re the only person I know who’s read it, and I have a _lot_ of feelings about it.”

 

“They’ve never read a single Higashino book?” Jinyoung asked. “That’s kind of sad, actually.”

 

“I know, right?” Jisoo said, mouth full of red bean and shaved ice. “First of all, I was totally losing my mind at how multi-layered the conflict was. There were so many twists and turns. At one point, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around how Nonoguchi’s cover story could get any deeper.”

 

“I thought it was kind of interesting that the author started us off with Nonoguchi’s point of view,” Jinyoung said, getting another scoop of shaved ice. “It definitely set the tone for what the reader could expect going into the book. He gets us trust Nonoguchi and then later tells us that he’s a complete liar.”

 

“I noticed that, too,” Jisoo said, tapping the spoon against her lower lip thoughtfully. Jinyoung was momentarily distracted by the action.

 

“But I think what I liked the most was how elegant the storyline was,” Jisoo said, turning and knocking his mind back to attention. “No blood or gore or scary, weird gimmicks, it was just a damn good mystery. It didn’t have to rely on shock factor or anything, but he still got me turning those pages. _Twice_!”

 

Jinyoung grinned, taking their now empty shaved ice container and tossing it into a trash bin as they passed it.

 

“So I’m guessing you liked it?” he asked.

 

Jisoo skipped ahead a little and started to walk backward, grinning.

 

“I would give it four out of five stars,” she said, taking lazy steps backward. Jinyoung took one look at her movements and shook his head.

 

“Why do you always walk backward?” he asked.

 

“To annoy you,” Jisoo laughed. She started humming and swung one foot behind the other as she traipsed backward and Jinyoung watched her, smirking and shaking his head. Then he grabbed her arm and moved her to the side before she could back up into a pole. 

 

“You’re going to get yourself hurt again,” he said. Jisoo smirked.

 

“Not if you keep doing what you just did,” she said. Jisoo laughed and was about to turn right-face and walk normally, but Jinyoung didn’t let go of her. His hold on her arm softened, but he kept his hand there and his eyes were so focused on her. She blushed under the intensity. But the moment was short lived when it was interrupted by the sound of soft strumming on a guitar. 

 

When Jisoo turned and Jinyoung looked up, they found themselves at a bridge where people had gathered to watch the light and water show. In the middle of the plaza, there was a guitarist busking for change. Jisoo took in the whole scene and laughed at how perfectly it lined up with what she had written in that 3 a.m. email. Almost as if she had predicted it.

 

“Scary accurate, isn’t it?” Jinyoung asked. 

 

“It is,” Jisoo said, shaking her head at the uncanniness. Since they were there, Jinyoung and Jisoo decided they ought to just catch the end of this light show and wait around for the start of the next one. In the meantime, they could listen to the guitarist’s setlist. 

 

They found a spot by the stairs that wasn’t too crowded by tourists or spectators, and they sat down. 

 

It really was a beautiful night, Jisoo thought. The iridescent light show from the bridge reflected in the glossy black of the water’s surface. The sky looked like blue velvet, and across the river, the city lights looked like an aurora borealis. The guitarist was playing a gentle riff and some children were running, chasing each other. She could feel Jinyoung’s warmth where his arm touched hers. 

 

“I used to come here a lot,” Jinyoung said, breaking their silence. “During freshman year, whenever I got homesick. It reminded me of the river that ran through town back home.”

 

Jisoo remembered it.

 

“I used to feed ducks there as a kid,” she said. Jinyoung looked at her and grinned.

 

“Me, too,” he said, fidgeting with his hands. “You know that mountain that’s by your farm?”

 

Jisoo nodded. “Of course I know that mountain,” she said. “Mt. Sol.”

 

“Right,” Jinyoung said. “Have you ever been up there?”

 

Jisoo shook her head. “I know, I’m a disgrace,” she said. “I’ve lived at the base all my life, but I never once went up there. Why? Have you been up there?”

 

“My dad used to take me before school started,” he said. “There’s a river there, too. Well, more like a stream, actually. One time when we were up there, we were hiking and we were trying to get across the stream. There was a log that had fallen over and we were walking over it to get to the other side. But I slipped and fell in.”

 

Jisoo widened her eyes. “Were you okay?”

 

“I literally thought I was going to drown and die,” Jinyoung said laughing. “But turned out, it was like a foot deep, and was mostly mud. We didn’t reach the campsite for another hour, but it ended up working out. I was covered in mud, so the bugs left me alone.”

 

He laughed at the memory, and Jisoo admired his crinkly smile again. When she first met Jinyoung, they were already twelve years old. She wondered what he was like as a much younger child. She imagined he must have been well-behaved, the kind of little boy that made his mother happy and proud. He probably did cute things for her, like volunteer to help with the cooking or secretly plunder the neighbors’ flower beds to make bouquets for her. She tried to imagine what he would have looked like as a child, and she conjured up an image of a little boy with big ears, crinkly eyes, and a gummy, toothy smile. 

 

All of a sudden, her vision of her future flashed before her: the remote house on the mountain where she lived alone and wrote books, except this time there was the pitter-patter of little feet, little feet that belong to a little boy with big ears and a smile as crinkly and gummy as his father’s. 

 

Jisoo’s intense blush took her out of the vision and brought her back to real life. She was startled at how quickly the vision could change.

 

“You should go there sometime,” Jinyoung said, interrupting her thoughts.

 

“Where?” she said.

 

“Mt. Sol,” he said, nodding. “It’s beautiful up there. You can see the stream where I fell in the mud. There’s a camp site a little further up. The trees are all huge and they have twisted, mangled branches, like something out of a storybook. Something to stir your imagination. And there’s… a flower field, a meadow. Between the stream and the campsite. You’d like it.”

 

Jisoo smiled. “I’ll think about it,” she said gently. “Jennie’s been trying to get the four of us to plan a post-graduation trip. Maybe I’ll suggest it.”

 

Jinyoung sighed.

 

“Ah. Graduation,” he said. “It’s coming up really fast.”

 

Jisoo groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

 

Jinyoung laughed. “I’m guessing that means you aren’t excited to leave college and get tossed into the deep end of the real world.”

 

“I mean, it’s sort of exciting,” Jisoo said, shrugging. “But mostly scary. I’ve been through four years of college, but sometimes I still don’t feel very grown up.”

 

Jisoo sat up and wrapped her arms around herself as she stared blankly ahead at the water. She was distracted, trying to figure out if the water was flowing right or left, but in the darkness, she couldn’t tell. 

 

“It’s sort of funny,” she said. “College is supposed to give you a sense of direction, tell you what you’re supposed to be doing for the rest of your life.”

 

She turned and looked at Jinyoung. “I mean, you, you’re studying bio,” she said. “You’re going to be a doctor. A person who studies engineering will become an engineer, and a person who studies dance wants to be a dancer. But me, I feel like, I’ve just confused myself these four years.”

 

She felt Jinyoung moving closer to her. To their left, the bridge light and water show started over again, and people started to applaud. 

 

“But,” Jisoo said and Jinyoung looked at her again. She smiled gently.

 

“I just keep telling myself,” she said. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Right now is for… enjoying light shows and listening to soft guitar and sitting by the river. It’s too dark to see which way it’s flowing, so I might as well enjoy this, go with the flow, and wait ’till morning to figure things out.”

 

Jinyoung smiled at how appropriately poetic she had made that sound. A writer indeed, he thought. She was looking a little past him, at the light show going on by the bridge where the lights were turning pink. But all his attention was on her. There was light breeze stirring the wisps of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Her hair looked wild, tousled by the wind. Her white button-up shirt had come untucked from her skirt, and she still had the bandage on her calf. For a brief moment, he had a vision of the wildling girl that had walked into his middle school classroom all those years ago. 

 

His heart started to pound in his chest. It wasn’t erratic or rapid, but every pump felt like it was going to leap out of his chest. He didn’t realize he was staring at her so intently until her eyes met his, and she laughed.

 

“What?” she said, blushing. “What are you staring at?”

 

Jinyoung laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “I just… I was… wondering…”

 

Jisoo leaned toward him, furrowing her brows. “Wondering what?” she asked.

 

He looked up and held her gaze. “So… at what point during our fictional date did I kiss you?”

 

Jisoo’s face broke into a huge, embarrassing smile that she tried to hide by looking down. “Umm,” she said, looking back at him shyly. “Five minutes ago? So you’re already late, Park Jinyoung.”

 

He smirked. “Better late than never, I guess.”

 

Jinyoung leaned forward and kissed her. 

 

Unlike the one a few nights ago—which was intense and impatient, all tongues and no air—this one was chaste and sweet and his lips were as soft as flower petals and they fit against her mouth as perfectly as a lock and key and her spirit felt like a lotus finally breaking the surface of the water and seeing the sun for the first time and however perfectly she had imagined this moment in that 3 a.m. email, _this_ was even better. 


	23. Malice

When Jisoo walked into the Embrace offices the following day, she cleared off her work station and straightened out her computer monitor. Then, she smoothed out her blouse and skirt then sat and waited patiently for Julie to call her into her office. Whenever Dara or another coworker walked by, she would open up her email inbox and try to look busy, but she didn’t want to start a task in case Julie suddenly asked her into her office.

 

After about an hour of this, she started to feel bad about sitting around and not doing any work, so she cautiously turned to the task list Dara had given her. It included more meaningless chores like going through her inbox and sending regretful replies to people emailing in their submissions and sending out a memo to staff the the parking lot on the east side of the building was going to be blocked off for construction next week.

 

Another hour passed, and Julie had even walked by to talk to someone working in the same office, but she didn’t even so much as look at Jisoo. She started to wonder: had Julie forgotten that she wanted to discuss something with Jisoo? Or worse, what if she had changed her mind?

 

Jisoo tried to take her mind off of it by going back to her task list. She picked up the phone and arranged for a caterer to bring food to the upcoming redesign and summer issue lock-in meeting with the Jeon & Sky editor-in-chief. Apparently this was going to be a big deal, as they would finalize which stories would be printed. Nothing ever saw the light of day at Jeon & Sky Publishers without the express approval of Editor Jeon himself.

 

In an uncharacteristic twist, Dara had given Jisoo free reign on which caterer would provide food at the meeting. Jisoo was torn between ordering Chinese food, which she thought was a pretty safe option, or something with a bit more class, like a catering company that did hors d’oeuvres and little finger sandwiches. She ended up choosing a classier option.

 

Lunch came around after what seemed like an eternity, and Julie Kiyoko still had not called Jisoo into her office. As she headed down to the employee cafeteria, Jisoo’s phone lit up with a phone call from Jinyoung.

 

 _A phone call from my boyfriend_?

 

She crinkled her brows. Not counting the fake dates she’d arranged to take pictures for their fake online account, the double-date with Jackson and Jennie, and not counting the gala or the publication party, she and Jinyoung had been on a grand total of _one_ date. Two if you counted the walk they took on the hillside park which ended with a hot, breathless make-out session in front of her apartment.

 

That was over a week and a half ago. He had called her nearly everyday since then, though, and they spent hours on the phone, talking about anything and everything. Somehow, though, they never managed to talk about what this all meant. They hadn’t even managed to talk about their feelings for each other yet.

 

So, what now? Did this mean she was his _girlfriend_?

 

“Hello?” Jisoo said, answering his phone call.

 

“Hey,” he said, gasping a little.

 

“Why are you out of breath?” Jisoo asked. She heard him scoff on the other end.

 

“I went for a run,” he said. “I’m studying—or I _was_ studying, but I started getting restless, so I took a couple laps around campus.”

 

“When are your exams?” Jisoo asked, grabbing a tray at the cafeteria. “I feel like you’re always studying.”

 

“I have one later this afternoon,” Jinyoung said. “Microbiology.”

 

“I don’t know the first thing about microbiology, but that sounds like a tough one,” Jisoo said. “How do you feel?”

 

She couldn’t see, but she was sure from his silence that he must have shrugged.

 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been studying all week, this is as prepared as I’ll ever be. I figured I should do something to calm my nerves.”

 

Jisoo smirked flirtatiously. “Is that why you called me?” she asked in a low voice.

 

Jinyoung laughed on the other end, realizing he’d walked straight into that one.

 

“Maybe,” he said. “Actually, I called to ask if you wanted to meet me for dinner tonight. After my exam. You get off work at six don’t you?”

 

Date #3, Jisoo thought. Do people typically settle on relationship labels after a handful of dates? She thought of asking him now but then decided that it was too early.

 

She liked Jinyoung. She liked spending time with him, liked talking to him, liked going on dates with him, walking by his side, hearing his stories, she liked kissing him. And if her reaction to their steamy kissing in front of her apartment was any indication, she couldn’t be sure just how far she’d go with him if she let go of her inhibitions.

 

But it was hard to really know, especially since she belonged to a generation of people who date serially and kiss casually and sleep around carelessly. When and how would she know if this was something more than a fling?

 

“Jisoo?” Jinyoung asked, prompting her. Jisoo cleared her throat.

 

“Dinner tonight sounds perfect,” she said.

 

She could practically hear him smiling over the phone. “Go on home after work, then, I’ll pick you up at your apartment.”

 

Jisoo agreed to the arrangement. She took her food tray and sat at a table by the window that was quieter and more private, and they continued talking until the end of her lunch break. Jisoo told Jinyoung about how long it was taking Julie to call her into her office to discuss her promotion, and Jinyoung talked about an incident at work involving someone who came in with a dog bite.

 

The rest of the day unfolded much like any other. Dara came out of her office after her lunch break and gave Jisoo a whole new task list, putting her in charge of things like typing in more data from surveys into spreadsheets and various kinds of business research. In a way, her work at Embrace was starting to resemble her old job at Vector Marketing, and it was disheartening.

 

 _At least I have dinner tonight to look forward to_ , she thought. She locked in an order to catering on the day of the meeting with Editor Jeon, and after doing a quick scan through her checklist to make sure she had finished it all, she looked at the clock.

 

It was five minutes to six. Dara was still in her office, agonizing over a draft, but Jisoo was sure that Julie had already left her office. Jisoo sighed. She guessed it wasn’t going to happen today after all.

 

She started to pack her things, which included a portfolio containing some of her old stories. She had been hoping to bring it up again and possibly get Julie’s feedback at the meeting she had promised the other day, to discuss her future at Embrace. But she supposed that would have to wait for another time.

 

Jisoo bade Dara a quick goodbye that went practically unnoticed. She took the elevator down to the ground level and started heading for the exit. But when she stepped out into the warm evening, Jisoo was surprised to see Julie Kiyoko waiting there for her.

 

“I thought your shift ended at six,” Julie said, beaming at Jisoo. The editorial assistant wasn’t sure how to reply. Julie Kiyoko took a few steps toward her.

 

“I know you’re off the clock already,” Kiyoko said. “But I was wondering if you had a minute to speak with me?”

 

Jisoo stuttered when she replied: “Y—Sur—Yes, sure,” she said. She thought for sure that Julie was going to lead her back into the building and up to her office, where all official business was supposed to take place. But instead, she crossed the street and left Jisoo to follow her.

 

While trailing behind her managing editor, Jisoo plucked her phone out of her pocket and remembered that Jinyoung was expecting her. As regretful as she felt, she was sure he would understand that something important had popped up. She sent a quick text message letting him know that she didn’t think she’d be back in time for their date.

 

Julie ended up leading Jisoo over to the cafe across the street from the offices, the very same one she had met Jinyoung at when Dara shouted at her. She followed her boss’ lead, paying for a cup of coffee and then sitting down at a table in the corner.

 

Jisoo radiated with eagerness, but she sat down quietly and waited for Ms. Kiyoko to begin the conversation herself. Julie began to arrange her napkin and cup on the table, folding the napkin into a rectangle and then angling it so that it lined up with the edge of the table. It took Jisoo all her strength not to tell her to just spit out what she wanted to say.

 

But Julie Kiyoko began her talk with a question that Jisoo didn’t expect to be able to answer so easily:

 

“Have you ever read _Malice_ by Keigo Higashino, Jisoo?” She adjusted her napkin again.

 

Jisoo widened her eyes at her boss and then laughed lightly.

 

“Actually, I have,” Jisoo said, amused at the coincidence. “My… boyfriend lent it to me recently.”

 

It felt awkward saying that, only because she wasn’t sure how true it was. She didn’t have a problem saying it before since she knew it was false, but now she wasn’t sure.

 

“Oh, Jinyoung? Yes, I remember him,” Ms. Kiyoko said, taking a sip of her tea and putting on that sugary smile that she always wears. Jisoo looks her up and down and realizes that she looks much the same as she did when she first interviewed her: neat and cosmopolitan, without a single hair out of place.

 

“So, what did you think of the book?” Kiyoko asked. “Give me a brief summary, if you remember it.”

 

“Well,” Jisoo said. “It’s about two writers. One kills the other, but when the police question him he lies about his motive, so a detective does some investigating, but throughout the book, the author keeps you guessing. Nonoguchi, the murderer, tried to make it seem like the victim had been plagiarizing all his stories.”

 

Jisoo remembered first reading the book and being shocked at how many times Higashino could create a story for his protagonist only to completely undo everything he had just made the reader believe and construct a completely new one altogether. And she was also struck by how passionate of a killer he had crafted, going so far as to copy, word-for-word, a dead man’s every book.

 

Julie seemed content with her answer, since she decided to move on.

 

“How do you like working for Embrace?” Julie asked. “Is it everything you dreamed it would be? You told me in your interview that you were in love with it. Is that still true?”

 

Jisoo’s smile faded a little. She wished she could tell Julie wholeheartedly that she loved Embrace every bit as much as she did before, maybe even more so. But when she replied, her tone betrayed her disappointment.

 

“It’s… definitely an experience,” Jisoo said. “A _learning_ experience, and I’m grateful.”

 

Julie smiled.

 

“Jisoo, please,” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me the truth. You hate working under Dara, don’t you?”

 

Jisoo smiled gently, embarrassed. She took Julie’s insistence on candor as a sign that she trusted her, liked her. She folded her hands into her lap and sighed.

 

“Honestly,” Jisoo said. “I was kind of hoping I’d be working under _you_. I mean, I _am_ , but I wish _you_ were my direct supervisor.”

 

Julie Kiyoko looked pleased.

 

“You’re a good worker, Jisoo,” the Embrace managing editor said. “And I meant what I said when I said you were one of the strongest candidates we’ve had apply before.”

 

Jisoo blushed modestly.

 

“Can you see yourself working at Embrace for a long time?” Julie continued. “Because _I_ can. Maybe someday you’ll be in Dara’s position. Would you like that?”

 

“I… I mean…” Jisoo stammered. She tried to hold back her eagerness, but truthfully, she would love to someday climb the ladder to associate editor. “If I could… _yes_ , I would like that.”

 

Julie Kiyoko stared at her for a long time. She was still smiling like she always did, but Jisoo was beginning to think that she smiled to hide what she was really thinking and feeling. She lifted her cup and took another sip of her tea.

 

“I was wondering if you might be interested in helping with a…” Julie paused for a minute to consider her words. “A… _special_ project of mine. But before I let you in on the details, I’d like to be sure of something.”

 

Jisoo leaned in. A special project? How exciting. “Yes?” she said.

 

Kiyoko leaned in. Her smile flattened into a thin line and she peered through her glasses, casting Jisoo a serious look.

 

“Who do you think was correct in that meeting?” she asked in a low voice. “Me or Dara?”

 

Jisoo stared blankly for a minute. This again?

 

“You, Ms. Kiyoko,” Jisoo said. The truth was, she still secretly maintained that both women were equal parts right and wrong, but she wanted Julie to trust her. And that occasionally meant harmlessly agreeing with her even when she wasn’t completely convinced.

 

“Is that the truth?” Julie asked.

 

Jisoo gulped. “I think so.”

 

“I have to be _sure_ , Jisoo,” Julie said. “This is a _very sensitive_ project I’m working on, I could use your help, but only if I’m sure of your commitment to my vision for Embrace.”

 

“Of course I am,” Jisoo insisted. “You can trust me.”

 

Julie stared at her a beat longer, searching her eyes for any sign of wavering. And then her smile returned.

 

“Good. I’m glad,” she said, sitting back and sipping on her tea. “You’re going to help me get rid of Dara.”

 

Jisoo felt the room go cold. “I’m sorry?”

 

But Julie just leaned back in her seat, taking the lid off her tea cup and lightly blowing against the surface of the liquid to cool it down.

 

“Dara has been with us for quite a few years now, and she had been doing a good job, but she and I don’t exactly see eye to eye,” Ms. Kiyoko said, grabbing the tea bag and making it bob in the steaming water.

 

“We’re very different people with very different visions for Embrace,” she continued. “The journal needs to evolve and grow, but I can’t do that if she fights me every step of the way. But Mr. Jeon will never fire her either, not unless she’s caught doing something very, very wrong… like, plagiarizing a junior staff member’s work.”

 

“What?” Jisoo narrowed her eyes at Julie. What was she _saying_?

 

“It would be quite easy actually,” Julie said, finally looking up at Jisoo again and giving her the same sickly sweet smile she always gave.

 

“You already manage almost every aspect of her professional life, as her assistant,” Julie continued. “I can give you access to archives so you can get a look at her previous work, get a feel for her style, get good enough with it to be able to write things and pretend to be her. And I believe in your talent—,”

 

“My _talent_?” Jisoo said. She threw her hands up, cutting Julie’s words off.

 

“Wait, hold on, time out!” Jisoo said, pressing her fingers to her temples. “What are you talking about? What are you _saying_? You want me to _copy_ Dara’s work?”

 

Julie laughed. “Jisoo, come on,” she said, putting her teacup back on the table. “You don’t want to work under Dara. I don’t want her to work under me. I want you to have Dara’s job just as much as you want to snatch it from her—,”

 

“But I don’t want—!”

 

“You said so yourself that she was a horrible person,” Julie said. “And don’t think for one second that I didn’t hear about her outburst. She should never have shouted at you like that in front of everybody. Think of this as a way to serve some earthly justice. You deserve it, Jisoo. You do.”

 

“Ms. Kiyoko,” Jisoo said. She was at a loss for words. She couldn’t believe this was happening. This had to be a joke of some kind. Julie Kiyoko took the napkin and patted it against her lip. Then she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table.

 

“Here’s the plan,” she said. “I’ll get you a copy of Dara’s submission for the short feature. Copy it, word-for-word, in a notebook and date it sometime before her draft. Do the same for some of her old features, fabricate some evidence that she’s been stealing your work and passing it off as her own.”

 

Jisoo’s face went pale. She felt dizzy all of a sudden.

 

“Then, when we publish the new issue,” Julie continued. “I’ll tell Mr. Jeon that you came to me with a complaint against Dara, and then you come forward with the evidence. I’ll vouch for you through it all. We’re writers, plagiarism is a serious accusation. Dara will never find work with a journal ever again, and we can make sure of it.”

 

 _Shit_ , Jisoo thought. She hadn’t thought of that, but it was true. A writer’s most powerful tool is his or her credibility. Without it, talent didn’t matter much.

 

“I’ll give you her job when she’s gone,” Julie said. “Think of it, Jisoo. You’ll have her title _and_ the pay, _and_ you don’t have to sit around punching numbers into spreadsheets any longer. You’ll be a _real_ writer. A serious one. Isn’t that you’ve always wanted? I can make that happen for you, Jisoo. I can make that dream come true, but you _have_ to help me.”

 

A real writer. Even now, the words made her skin tingle. Jisoo pictured herself sitting at Dara’s desk, managing submissions, being tapped to write feature stories, going to lit fairs and book conventions, meeting important people, having her work read by thousands of subscribers across the country.

 

It was tempting. But Julie Kiyoko’s means for getting it made her skin crawl.

 

“I don’t think I’m the right person for this,” Jisoo whispered.

 

Julie’s face was stoic. “Excuse me?”

 

“I said I don’t think I’m the right person to do this,” Jisoo said, finishing the last of her coffee and preparing to leave. Julie put on that smile again, but Jisoo was starting to realize now that it was a fake smile, a smile to mask the person she really was underneath.

 

“Whether or not that’s true isn’t important anymore,” Julie said, her voice as fake sweet as her smile. “I’ve already let you into the project, and there’s no backing out. Not after I’ve gabbed this much.”

 

“I’m sorry… I don’t think I can help,” Jisoo stood and grabbed her bag, but Julie snapped at her before she could make another move.

 

“Jisoo. Sit down,” she said. “I can’t let you back out of this, you need to understand that. I’ve revealed too much to you already, so you don’t have a choice. I’m your _superior_ , so _you_ listen to _me_.”

 

Jisoo’s heart was pounding. “Ms. Kiyoko. I can’t do this,” she whispered.

 

“Yes, you can, and you _will_ ,” Julie said, raising her voice. “I’m the _managing editor_ of Embrace. I have connections throughout this country’s whole publishing industry, if you upset me, I can make sure you _never_ work as in this business ever again.”

 

A threat. Jisoo fought through her muddled feelings to try and fortify herself against this… bully.

 

“You don’t know anything about me,” Jisoo said.

 

“I know that Jinyoung isn’t your boyfriend,” Julie said, tilting her head. “I know you probably paid him to come to company events and come to the interview with me and pose for pictures so you could set up a fake online profile about your fake relationship.”

 

Jisoo froze. How?

 

“Just how stupid did you think I was?” Julie asked, leaning back in her chair again. “Of course I knew that wasn’t real. Did you find him at some agency? You almost had me fooled, the way he kissed you at the party.”

 

Julie giggled while Jisoo’s face went pale.

 

“I just ignored your pathetic little charade because I thought I saw in you a little bit of myself,” Julie said. “I saw a girl who was willing to do just about anything to reach her dream, even lie to me. You knew our hiring requirements. But you lied anyway. Some employers would call that _fraud_.”

 

Jisoo stared at Julie Kiyoko’s face, but through the smile she saw the darkness of her heart. The managing editor nodded her head at the empty chair.

 

“Sit down, Jisoo,” she said, and Jisoo lowered herself into it, heart trembling.

 

“Just one email blast is all it would take for me to make sure you never reach your dream, Jisoo,” Julie said. “You don’t want me for an enemy. You want me as your friend. And we are friends, Jisoo. Remember that. I’m your friend. Dara is your enemy.”

 

Jisoo felt cornered, trapped. She stared defiantly at Julie. “What do you want from me?”

 

Julie smirked, feeling victorious. “Good girl,” she said, and then stood up. “Follow me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as he returned his exam to the professor, Jinyoung gathered his things and checked his phone as he left the classroom. The test had taken longer than he’d anticipated, and it was well past 6:45 in the evening. He hoped Jisoo didn’t wait too long. He was about to call her to explain why he was late when he saw that she’d sent him a message while he was sitting the test.

 

 _Julie asked me to coffee after work_ , the message said. _She wants to discuss my career, I don’t know how long it’ll take. I’m sorry to cancel dinner tonight!_

 

Of course he felt disappointed, but also relieved that she wasn’t just sitting around waiting for him. That, and he felt secretly glad that her boss had asked her out to coffee to discuss her career. He hoped the conversation was going well.

 

It was a little late, but he messaged her back anyway, telling her it was alright and that they could take a rain check for now and reschedule for another night. As he stepped out of the building and into the warm night, he guessed he’d have to make other arrangements for dinner, then.

 

“Hey. Park Jinyoung,” said a female voice behind him. When he turned, Lee Nawon was speed walking towards him with an annoyed look on her face. He was stunned. Her, again?

 

“What do you want?” he said, turning to face her and putting on a grimace. Nawon took one look at his indignant and scoffed.

 

“Calm down, I’m not here to beg for your forgiveness again,” she said.

 

“Then why are you here?” he said. Nawon scoffed again, and then shoved an envelope in his face. Jinyoung snatched it from her, and Nawon was already starting to walk away.

 

“Update your address next time,” she called as she walked away. “They had that delivered to your old apartment.”

 

Jinyoung scoffed, guessing that that meant she was now living with Mark in his old apartment. Unbelievable, he thought. When Nawon was out of sight, he turned his attention back to the envelope she’d pushed at him. It was thick and heavy, and the corner of the envelope had a prestigious violet logo stamped on it, surrounded by a Latin motto.

 

Jinyoung held his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100%, I need to go back and do some major story editing especially after adding this chapter. Hope you guys are enjoying thus far, and we are nearing the end! :D Just as a heads-up, things are going to get very Jisoo-centric in upcoming chapters.


	24. Time Has a Funny Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some mild sexual content, be warned.

Jisoo sat back in her chair and turned her wrist, stretched her fingers. 

 

It was a Saturday night, and she had been hunched over her desk all day, furiously copying words from a dusty old Embrace issue. Julie aimed to put the plan into action before the redesign unveiling meeting with the editor-in-chief of Embrace, which was coming up fast, but she wanted this portion of the scheme finished before Wednesday.

 

Jisoo looked down at the box of old issues that Julie had pulled for her from Archives. It was every issue from the past year that contained work that Dara had written, and some drafts from her days as a junior staffer. Julie was making her copy every single one, almost word-for-word into the notebook.

 

She grabbed a newspaper from her desk and tossed it over the box so that she didn’t have to look at it. She already felt like enough of a crook without being reminded that she still had two issues’ worth of Dara’s work to steal.

 

Jisoo was in the eye of a moral hurricane. For the past two days, she had been copying words into a notebook and feeling more and more consumed by her own guilt. But what could she do? Julie Kiyoko was the managing editor, the highest ranking person at Embrace after Mr. Jeon himself. Her career was stake. Her dreams of touching the lives of millions of people with the written word were at stake if she didn’t comply. 

 

But complying made her feel like a dishonest crook. Made her feel like someone she didn’t want to know, let alone _be_. 

 

The doorknob turned, and Jisoo stood to hide the boxes and her work, but it was just Lisa who stuck her head in. She was wearing a sequined body-con dress and clutched a pair of strappy high heels in her hand. She had on a face full of makeup.

 

“What are you doing tonight?” Lisa asked.

 

“Working!” Jisoo snapped, moving in front of her desk. 

 

“Still?” Lisa said. “You’ve been shut up in here literally all day. You never even changed out of your pajamas from this morning.”

 

Jisoo was aware that she looked like a slob, but mostly because she felt like one. Her work was making her feel like one. She had tied her hair into a messy bun and still wore the cotton shorts and the worn, loose shirt that she had put on to sleep in the night before. 

 

“I’m… writing,” Jisoo said, putting her palm down on the notebook’s open page to keep Lisa from being able to read her words. Her roommate crossed her arms. 

 

“But it’s _Saturday night_!” Lisa whined. “Rose and I are going to the Lambda Chi party, you should come with us! Or at least pre-game with us in the kitchen.”

 

“I can’t,” Jisoo said, wishing the Lisa would just turn around and leave her to commit fraud in peace.

 

“But it’s no fun with just the two of us,” Lisa said. “Jennie is out with Jackson, and you never hang out with us anymore.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Jisoo said. Lisa stood there, pouting at Jisoo for another minute, but then seeing that she was fighting a hopeless battle, she sighed and then bid Jisoo goodnight as she left the room.

 

“Close the door, please,” Jisoo said and Lisa did as she was told. Lisa walked back to the kitchen, where Rose was pouring herself another shot of coconut rum. 

 

“So, is she coming?” Rose asked.

 

“No,” Lisa said, crestfallen. Rose held the bottle of rum out of Lisa, and Lisa took it. 

 

“Aww, but why?” Rose said. “She never hangs out with us anymore. She’s always busy writing her novel or going to her job.”

 

Lisa tipped the bottle and drank a little. “It’s fine,” she said. “There’ll be other parties. Let’s just go on our own this time.”

 

“Ugh, fine,” Rose said, hopping off the counter and zipping up her thigh-high boots. “But next time, she’s our DD.”

 

Lisa bent over and put the scrappy heels on her feet. After they both grabbed their jackets, they screwed the cap back onto the rum bottle and then stored it on the shelf. Then, they headed toward the door. Lisa was just in the middle of telling Rose the beginning of a funny story when they opened the door and tried to step out but found their paths blocked by Jinyoung. 

 

He had his arm stretched out like he was just about to knock on the door, and he looked a little stunned to see Lisa and Rose standing there. He smiled nervously.

 

“Hi,” he said.

 

“Are you looking for Jisoo?” Rose asked. 

 

“She’s in her room,” Lisa said as Jinyoung stepped aside and let the girls walk out of their apartment. “But I think she’s working on her book or something since she blew off our invitation to go out tonight.”

 

Lisa stepped past Jinyoung, walking towards the elevator lobby, followed by Rose.

 

“Just make sure you lock the door when you leave in the morning,” she joked, and the two disappeared down the corridor, giggling. 

 

Jinyoung felt amused. Taking their quick retreat as an invitation to let himself in, he stepped in and closed the door as he removed his shoes. The last time he’d been in this apartment was when he picked Jisoo up for the Scholars’ Gala, which wasn’t too long ago. He still remembered which room was hers. 

 

“Hello?” he called out cautiously. When no one answered, he took another step into the living area. “Jisoo?” he called again. Still no answer. He swore Lisa told him that she was here, but then he remembered that she also said that Jisoo was probably writing. He guessed she was probably too deep in focus to hear him. 

 

He walked down the hall and found the door that led to her room and knocked.

 

Inside, Jisoo’s head shot up at the sound. “Lisa?” she called out. The knob turned, and Jisoo’s heart stopped seeing Jinyoung walk in instead of Lisa. 

 

She jumped up and tried to cover her work, more out of reflex. Her first reaction should have been to say hello or be more happy that the boy she liked came to see her. Instead, she was more concerned that Jinyoung was here and she was still wearing pajamas, her hair was a mess, she didn’t have a speck of makeup on, and she didn’t even bother to put on a bra that morning. 

 

And now Jinyoung was in her room, staring at her. She crossed her arms over her chest as if to hide herself.

 

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Jinyoung looked taken aback.

 

“I… I came to… sorry, is this a bad time?” he said.

 

He looked like he was about to back out the door, and Jisoo suddenly felt sorry.

 

“No!” she said. “It’s… I mean…” she side-eyed the notebook that was still open on her desk, along with the draft Dara had written. She hurriedly tucked the paper into the notebook, closed it, and then put it aside. 

 

“Were you working?” Jinyoung said.

 

“Uh, no… uh, not really,” Jisoo said. She mentally scolded herself for being rude, but she couldn’t help how her nerves flared up. She looked back at Jinyoung. He was wearing an oatmeal-colored crewneck sweater over a pair of jeans. His hair was left tousled by the wind outside, and his eyes looked a little tired. She guessed that he must have gotten off a shift at work and then came to see her. Butterflies awoke in her stomach at the thought.

 

She cleared her throat. “Sorry,” she said. “But… seriously, what are you doing here?”

 

Jinyoung was studying her, too. He took in her unkempt hair bun and her comfortable clothing and guessed that she must have been holed up in her room all day. He looked over at her desk and was momentarily curious about what she was working on. But her voice called him back to attention and he remembered why he came in the first place. 

 

He held up the envelope he received two days ago. Jisoo took one look at the insignia on the corner and her hands flew up to cover her mouth.

 

“Oh my god,” she whispered. “This is it. Right?”

 

Jinyoung nodded silently. He saw her smile behind her fingers, but Jisoo noticed that the seal hadn’t been broken yet. 

 

“Haven’t you opened it, yet?” she asked.

 

“Not yet,” Jinyoung said, shaking his head nervously. “I… I was too nervous when I got it, I couldn’t do it.”

 

Jisoo pouted. “Jinyoung!” she said. “What the hell? Open it! Why would you put yourself through all that tension? Open it!”

 

Jinyoung looked down at the unopened envelope and bit his lip. His heart was thrumming and his nerves were ripe with anxiety. He tried to slide his thumb under the seal and break it open, but he sighed and then handed it to Jisoo.

 

“You open it,” he said. Jisoo wrinkled her brows.

 

“What?” she said and then pushed the envelope back at him. “No, I can’t! You do it, I’m too nervous.”

 

“ _You’re_ nervous?” Jinyoung said, and then laughed. “How do you think _I_ feel? Jisoo, just do it. If it’s bad news, I’d rather hear it from you first than have to read it on my own.”

 

“Oh my god,” Jisoo said, relenting and taking the envelope from him. She looked down at the logo on the corner: the School of Medicine at Cheonbyul University. 

 

 _Shit_ , she thought. That was a _really_ good school. A tough school. She’d always had faith in Jinyoung’s academic prowess, but seeing just how big he’d dreamed, she became scared—what if he didn’t get in? He’d be heartbroken. How could she tell him if the letter inside was one of regret? She couldn’t bear to be the one to tell him he’d failed. This was a small envelope, she thought. Aren’t acceptance letter usually mailed together with acceptance packages and brochures and a little more fanfare? 

 

Jinyoung turned around and ran a hand through his hair and huffed his breath in exasperation. Jisoo sighed as she tore the seal open and pulled the letter out. She started to read aloud:

 

“Dear Park Jinyoung, Congratulations— _Jinyoung_!” she shouted happily before she could even finish the sentence. “ _You got in_!”

 

“What? Let me see that.”

 

Jinyoung turned back around and Jisoo handed the letter to him. His eyes scanned the first line, reading the words “congratulations” again and again just to make sure that was what it really said and his powers of spelling weren’t just failing him. After confirming that, yes, he really _had_ been accepted, he suddenly found it hard to breathe.

 

“Holy _shit_ ,” he breathed.

 

The smile that spread across his face was so wide, it made his cheeks sore. _Finally_ , he thought. Things were starting to look up.

 

After he finished reading the letter, he lowered it, and immediately Jisoo threw her arms around his torso and started hugging the life out of him. He laughed just because he felt so damn happy in that moment, and Jisoo felt his laughter rumbling in his chest. She let out a sigh of relief.

 

“I’m really happy for you,” she whispered against the cloth of his sweater. 

 

She was squeezing him a little too tight, but Jinyoung didn’t care. He liked the pressure against his chest. After reading the letter, he was feeling weightless and airy and her arms around him felt like she was keeping him from floating away. Jinyoung couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop laughing. He lifted his arms and returned her embrace. 

 

“Thank you,” he whispered against her hair.

 

Jisoo relaxed her arms’ grip around his chest and closed her eyes a minute, savoring the feeling of being held. The first time he hugged her was when she finally apologized for stealing his test, right after her confrontation with Nawon. Tonight, though, there’s none of that stiff awkwardness between them. Tonight, she feels perfectly at home in his arms. After a minute of breathing in his scent, however, Jinyoung started rubbing her back soothingly. Or at least he did, until his hand paused for a beat too long as it ran down her spine. 

 

Jisoo’s cheeks colored. _Oh my god_ , she thought. _He’s probably realized I’m not wearing a bra_.

 

She pulled away from him suddenly and then crossed her arms over her chest, again, trying to do so without making too big a fuss. When she looked at him, he looked flustered and confused and a little pink in the face. 

 

“Umm… anyway, congratulations,” Jisoo said, trying to salvage the momentousness of the occasion. Jinyoung smiled again and looked back down at the letter, sighing.

 

“This is a huge burden off my shoulders,” he said, folding the letter back and sliding it into its envelope. He sighed again. “Now there’s just final exams and graduation left. Then the future starts.”

 

Jisoo smiled. _The future starts_. What a simultaneously comforting and alarming sentence, she thought. Jinyoung was still looking down tenderly at the envelope. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and he looked so content.

 

She remembered how they used to be in high school. The competition between them was so cutthroat and tense. When his speech beat hers out and he took the valedictorian spot from her, she had been livid. Her high school self never could have imagined that one day she’d be congratulating him on getting into med school and feeling wholeheartedly and genuinely proud of him, her old arch nemesis. 

 

 _We’ve come a long way since then_ , she thought.

 

“We should… have a toast or something,” Jisoo said, clearing her throat. She stepped past Jinyoung and walked out the hall and toward the kitchen. It felt a little weird, at first. It was the first time she’d left her room that day. She knew that there wouldn’t be champagne in the fridge, but Rose always kept a bottle of rosé in the fridge. She snatched it from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and grabbed two glasses.

 

When she returned to her room, Jinyoung was sitting on her bed, holding the rabbit plushie that always sat faithfully by her pillow, and the image startled her. She’d never had a boy sit on her bed before. 

 

“Ahem,” she said, setting the glasses down on her dresser. “Get off my bed before we do this toast, I don’t want anything spilling onto the sheets.”

 

Jinyoung laughed as he lowered himself to the floor, leaning back against her bed frame. Jisoo poured some of the sparkling pink wine into their glasses and then handed one to him.

 

“A toast,” Jisoo said, holding her glass up as she lowered herself to the floor to sit next to him. “To… tomorrows. For giving us hope.”

 

Jinyoung smiled gently as he clinked his glass against hers: “And to yesterdays,” he said. “For bringing us here.”

 

Jisoo nodded firmly at the addition, and they drank to it, to the future and to the past. Rose’s rosé had been left in the fridge improperly corked, so it wasn’t as bubbly as before, though the taste still held up. Jinyoung looked over at Jisoo and caught her just as she was wiping her lip with the back of her hand, which only put his attention back to her mouth.

 

“You should tell your mom,” Jisoo said, turning to him. “I bet she’ll be really proud.”

 

“I will, eventually,” Jinyoung said, tipping the rest of the wine into his mouth. “I’ll call her tomorrow, it’s kind of late right now.”

 

“You know, your dad would be really proud, too,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung sighed as he smiled.

 

“I hope he would be,” Jinyoung said. “I don’t think he was around when I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”

 

“Literally, _all_ parents want their sons to be doctors,” Jisoo joked. “Doctors or lawyers or CEO’s. Your dad would be over the moon with this news. Trust me.”

 

Jisoo grabbed the bottle from her dresser, then she leaned forward to pour a little more rosé into his empty glass, and the movement made her shirt’s neckline dip forward. Jinyoung forced himself to focus on the blush liquid in his glass, which as his pink as his cheeks flushed. 

 

“You know what I just thought right now?” Jisoo said, leaning back against the bed frame. “Our teacher, Mr. Hong, would’ve been really proud of you, too. You were one of his favorite students, he probably always knew you’d go far.”

 

Jinyoung laughed, remembering their old teacher fondly.

 

“I wish I could’ve gone to his funeral,” Jisoo said. 

 

“It was a beautiful service,” Jinyoung said. “His whole family was there, and other kids from our class who kept in touch. It was really nice.”

 

“He really was one of my favorite teachers growing up,” Jisoo said, refilling her glass and then bringing her knees closer to her chest.

 

Jinyoung thought it was strange thinking of Mr. Hong. Especially now, as he sat in Jisoo’s bedroom drinking with the girl he thought he hated most of his life. All this really only happened because Mr. Hong had asked him posthumously to arrange a lunch date with her. If someone had told him when he was in high school that one day we would get into med school and he would be having his first celebratory drink with Kim Jisoo, his fiercest rival, he would’ve laughed until he dropped dead. He wondered…

 

“Do you think Mr. Hong… _knew_ this was going to happen?” Jinyoung mused as he, too, leaned back against the bed frame. Jisoo had just taken a sip from her glass when she gave him a puzzled look.

 

“What do you mean?” Jisoo asked. “Like, did he know you’d get into med school? Probably, yeah.”

 

“No,” Jinyoung said. “I meant us.”

 

Jisoo froze and turned to him. This was the closest, yet, that Jinyoung had come to acknowledging that they were a _thing_ now, that they were an _us_. The thought made her heart thrum. Jisoo shrugged.

 

Jinyoung downed his second glass of wine. “All I know is that if someone told me just a year or two ago that I’d be here with you now, I would’ve sent them to student psychological services for being insane.”

 

Jisoo laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “But how could Mr. Hong have known? That would mean that… he saw it coming when we just _twelve_. Do you really think he predicted… _us_ , ten years down the line?”

 

“Who knows?” Jinyoung said, laughing. “It’s just funny to think about, I guess. Ten years is a long way to see into the future.”

 

Jisoo nodded. She thought of the girl she was ten years ago. She’d been a little skittish, insecure, stubborn, a little arrogant, but very determined. Actually, Jisoo thought, for the most part, she still was all those things. The thought disturbed her. Had she really changed so little in ten years?

 

“Ten years,” Jinyoung said, running his thumb along the rim of the empty glass. “It feels so long ago, but it also feels like it was just last week.”

 

Jisoo laughed. “Time has a funny way of running,” she said softly. “Day-to-day, it feels like nothing really changes, but then you look back and nothing is the same.”

 

Jinyoung was looking at the light shining down from her desk lamp. He could see tiny dust particles floating in the cylinder of light. 

 

“I wonder where we’ll be ten years from now,” Jisoo wondered aloud. This was a very common subject of many of her in-class daydreams. 

 

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung said, turning and looking at her profile, framed by stray wisps of untamed hair. “It’s hard to tell. But wherever we are, I hope we’re both happy.”

 

Jisoo smiled gently. “Ten years from now,” she said. “I hope I’ll have a house of my own. I hope… I hope that I’ll have seen more of the world.”

 

Jinyoung smiled. “Ten years from now,” he said. “I hope I’ll be wrapping up my residency. I hope I’ll have a job lined up, maybe at a hospital. That would be nice.”

 

“Ten years from now,” Jisoo said, sitting up and tilting her head thoughtfully. “I wonder if I’ll be married by then. Or if I’ll have kids. But if I’m still single as thirty-two, I guess that’s alright, too.”

 

Jinyoung had thought of marrying someday, too. He was tempted to picture himself married to her ten years down the line, but when he looked ten years back, things were so different that he was afraid to assume that things would stay the same between him and Jisoo ten years later. So much had happened in the space of four months alone. Who could say that they would stay like this even into the next week?

 

But then again… there were also some things that hadn’t changed in ten years. Jinyoung had fallen for Jisoo when they were twelve years old, and now at twenty-two… he couldn’t say for sure that he was in love with her, but… the potential was there, and it was as strong as it was ten years ago. That little flame of a childish crush had survived inside him for ten years. 

 

“I wonder,” Jisoo said, speaking her thoughts aloud again and pulling Jinyoung out of his. “I wonder if in ten years, I’ll be managing editor.”

 

She started to rub her arm. The thought of someday having Julie’s job should have excited her, but now, it made her feel uncertain. 

 

“Speaking of managing editors,” Jinyoung said, sitting up. “How did your meeting with Julie go?”

 

Jisoo’s eyes grew wide at the question. 

 

“What?” she said.

 

“Your coffee meeting,” Jinyoung said. “The other day, that’s why you had to cancel our dinner plans?”

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said, her mind swirling with panicked thoughts. _Just make something up_ , she thought.

 

“It was nothing,” Jisoo said, absentmindedly, anxiously rubbing a spot on her neck. “I just… we had to discuss… something… about the upcoming issue and… I got… assigned a new… she just needs me to work with her on something, that’s all, and I—”

 

“Stop doing that,” Jinyoung said, grabbing her elbow and pulling her hand away from rubbing her neck. “It’s distracting.”

 

Jisoo laughed nervously. “Anyway, it was… nothing that important,” she said, wishing that this conversation was over. “I mean, it was important, that’s why I had to cancel dinner, but it was just… some new project that she put me on, that’s all.”

 

“Is that what you were working on just now?” Jinyoung said, gesturing with his head at the notebook on her desk. He might have been concerned about his acceptance letter, but he _was_ still attentive enough to notice her being antsy about that notebook. He set his glass aside and made a move to stand up.

 

“Which reminds me,” he said, getting onto his feet. “I don’t think you’ve ever shown me anything you’ve written. Can I see what you’re working on now?”

 

“No!” Jisoo snapped. She crouched forward and frantically grabbed a handful of his pant leg to stop him from approaching the desk. The move caught him slightly-off guard, and it had quite the opposite effect, since it didn’t make him want to stop, it just made him want to keep teasing her. He cocked a brow at her.

 

“Why not?” he asked, smirking. He moved his leg out of her grip and then took the notebook from her desk. He was just about to open it when Jisoo sprung up from the ground and tried to grab it from him. Jinyoung, however, was quick enough to move it just out of reach. 

 

Jisoo glared at him, but unfortunately, Jinyoung just thought she looked cute when she was angry. He laughed.

 

“What _is it_ about this notebook?” he said.

 

“Nothing,” Jisoo insisted, and then she tried to snatch it from his grip, but Jinyoung held it behind his back. Jisoo smiled mockingly. “Wow, really? How old are we?”

 

“Just tell me what’s in it,” he teased. Jisoo tried to grab it from behind his back, but Jinyoung slid out to the left, making Jisoo bump into her own desk. She looked back and threw him a deathlike glare. She burned with determination, but Jinyoung only smirked, taunting her. She scoffed. 

 

“Let me guess,” Jinyoung said. “This thing is full of gay smut, right?”

 

“Is that why you want to read it so badly?” when he laughed at her reply, Jisoo took this as her opportunity. He was distracted. She lunged at the notebook. Jinyoung snatched it just out of her reach and then held it behind his back. Jisoo tried to reach behind him, but her chest crashed into his and the force knocked him backward, onto the bed. 

 

Jinyoung laughed as he tried to keep the notebook out of reach and Jisoo kept lunging for it. He crawled backward until his back hit the headboard and he couldn’t go back anymore. Jisoo reached behind him and wrestled the thing from his grip. 

 

Once the notebook was safely in her hands, she waved it in front of his face and laughed triumphantly. But the look in his eye wasn’t playful anymore. Jisoo looked down at herself and saw that their little game of keep-away had made her forget herself. Jinyoung was backed up against her headboard and she was straddling his lap. Her messy bun had come undone and her shirt was a lot more worn out than she thought. 

 

Jisoo flushed red when she noticed Jinyoung’s eyes looking her up and down and pausing to look at some parts of her more than others. She felt her skin burning up in the places where his gaze lingered, felt her heartbeat reverberating through her whole body.

 

“Don’t touch this notebook,” Jisoo said. She started to get off him, but then Jinyoung’s hands suddenly came up and held her firmly around the hips, holding her in place. The action made her breath hitch. 

 

“Wait,” he whispered. Jisoo looked up at Jinyoung and saw that his eyes had darkened. He took her hand, the one that was holding the notebook, and he moved it aside until the notebook fell to the corner of the bed, forgotten. 

 

Jisoo’s heart rate kicked up and her breathing became jagged. Jinyoung’s eyes had _that look_ in them. When he brought his face closer to her, she thought he was going to kiss her mouth, but she gasped when he pressed his lips to her neck instead.

 

Jinyoung’s hand moved up from her hips to her waist, thumbs pressed against her ribcage through the thin fabric of her shirt. He pulled her closer to him. Jisoo, not knowing what to do with her hands, chose to rest them on his shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of his sweater when his teeth made contact with her skin. She could hear the little noises his mouth made as he kissed and sucked and all of it was sending little shockwaves of electricity through her. 

 

Then one of his hands let go of her waist pulled down her shirt’s neckline, making it stretch until her breastbone was exposed. Then he started to kiss her chest. 

 

Jisoo leaned back, giving him easier access. A million thoughts were racing through her head, but her brain wasn’t in charge right now: her body was, and it wanted more. 

 

Jinyoung pulled her neckline down again, stretching it to the right until her left breast emerged from behind the fabric. Jisoo barely even had time to register his movements before he dipped his head, caught her nipple between his lips, and pressed a hot tongue against it.

 

 _Damn it all to hell_ , Jisoo thought. 

 

All at once, she stood up from the bed, taking her nipple from between his teeth. Jinyoung was startled.

 

“I’m sorry!” he sputtered out in a panic. “I’m sorry, we can take it slow, I—”

 

“No, no no no no!” Jisoo said, waving her hands. “No, it’s not that! I… I was…”

 

“Is something wrong?” Jinyoung asked, his voice plagued with genuine concern. It was touching. His face was just as flushed as her, and his breathing was just as labored, and the bulge in his pants didn’t go unnoticed. 

 

“No!” Jisoo said, flustered. “Nothing’s wrong. I… that was lovely, it’s just—”

 

“You don’t want to?” Jinyoung said. “That’s fine, that’s okay. We can just talk, we can—,”

 

“No! _Shut up_!” Jisoo said. Her face was burning up with embarrassment and frustration and also a little leftover lust from Jinyoung’s kisses. He shut his mouth and waited for her to speak.

 

“I _do_ want to,” Jisoo said, slowly. “It’s just that… I haven’t done this before. Not ever, this’ll be the first time, so… I just… want to do things… _properly_. You know?”

 

Jinyoung held her gaze a long time before nodding. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Properly. Whatever you want.”

 

“Okay,” Jisoo said, sighing with relief as she slowly backed toward the door. Jinyoung sat up and leaned forward, wondering why she was heading for the door.

 

“Where are you going?” he said.

 

“Stay there!” Jisoo said, putting a hand up to stop him. Jinyoung froze. “Just stay right there, on the bed. I just… I’m going to the bathroom, I need to… prepare.”

 

She’d been holed up in her bedroom over ten hours and hadn’t had a shower since yesterday. She didn’t feel sexy at all. Jinyoung cocked a brow at her as she continued to back up toward the door, and he smirked.

 

“Okay,” he said, going along with her. “Sure.”

 

“Good,” Jisoo said, turning the doorknob and starting to exit into the hall. “You stay here. Stay here and… stay _on_ , you know? I’ll be back in five minutes tops.”

 

Jisoo disappeared into the hallway before she could even see what his reaction was. Her heart was pounding as she tried to run and tip-toe down the hall and into the bathroom. She scoured the drawers until she found the box of condoms that Jennie always kept in case of emergency. Jisoo never had an emergency until now, but she thanked her stars that Jennie was always prepared.

 

She opened the box and pulled one condom packet out. She was about to leave but then suddenly stopped. 

 

 _Wait, no_ , she thought. 

 

She liked Jinyoung _way_ too much. Once wasn’t going to be enough, right? She grabbed a second condom. But then, remembering how forcefully Jinyoung had grabbed her hips and pressed his body against hers, she wondered if twice would be enough for _him_. So she grabbed a third. Finally, she thought: “fuck it” and just grabbed the entire box. Just in case.

 

Then she scoured all her roommates’ rooms trying to figure out who, among the three, was closest to her clothing size. She needed clean lingerie, and found it in the form of lacy white underwear in Jennie’s room. After settling on that, she raced back to the bathroom and took a look at her reflection.

 

 _I’m such a mess_ , she thought. Her hair was greasy. It needed a wash. She probably still had dry perspiration clinging to her skin from yesterday. She grabbed her shirt and tried to inhale her own scent. When she got too paranoid that she smelled, she decided to just hop into the shower for a quick shampoo and rinse.

 

Then she noticed that she had missed a section of her leg when she shaved the other day. So she opened up a new packet of razors and shaved her legs and then thought that she may as well shave her arms, too. When Jisoo hopped out of the shower, she grabbed her toothbrush and started to brush her teeth. Then she noticed that her brows needed to be groomed. So she dashed to Lisa’s room to borrow her tweezers and began to pluck her brows. 

 

She started to dry herself with the towel when she realized that her bikini line needed to be groomed, too. She knew that Rose kept a box of pre-waxed strips in the cabinet and that she used it on her bikini line often, but Jisoo had never used it before, and she wasn’t sure if tonight was the night to try it out for the first time. But in the time that it took for her to build up enough courage to wax her pussy, she realized that her hair was wet and needed to be dried ASAP. So she settled on trimming her bush with a small pair of scissors and the cleaning it up, gently, with a razor, instead.

 

She dried her hair and spent a few minutes debating whether or not she should curl it. Jinyoung liked it curled, she thought. Would he appreciate it if she curled her hair for him tonight? In the end, she decided against it. Her hair was always a little wavy after a wash anyway, so that would have to do for now. She changed into the lacy underwear set she stole from Jennie’s drawers. Then she wondered if she should put on makeup, but ultimately decided not to since she figured it would just get smeared later anyway.

 

When all the grooming prep was done, Jisoo looked at her self in the mirror, newly clean and wearing nice underwear.

 

 _This is it_ , she said, hyping herself up for what was to come. _This is happening. Tonight. You’re doing this. You’re going to have sex. With a boy you really like and who really likes you. This is the real life_. _You look good, you look sexy. Now go! Get in there and get some!_

 

Jisoo opened the door and walked back into her bedroom with all the sensual confidence that she could muster. Except instead of walking in to find Jinyoung ready for a night of romance, Jisoo found him asleep.

 

He was stretched out on one side of her bed, turned toward the wall and was even holding her rabbit plush in his arms as he dozed off. She hurriedly checked the clock on her phone and realized that her five minutes of prep time had taken close to an hour, at it was now past midnight. 

 

Jisoo couldn’t tell who she was more upset with: herself for taking twenty goddamn years to get ready, or Jinyoung for falling asleep. She supposed it was more her fault than anyone else’s. At this point, all she could do was laugh at herself and at the universe.

 

She walked over to the bed and leaned over Jinyoung to get a look at his face. His breathing was deep and even. He _did_ seem tired when he first came, she thought. She reached over him and grabbed the notebook that had started everything and put it back on her desk. Then she walked over to her chest of drawers and grabbed another shirt and pajama bottoms and put them on over the underwear she’d borrowed. 

 

She looked down at Jinyoung’s face again before she turned the lights out. She stared at his face for a long time, watching his pupils moved beneath his closed eyelids, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. 

 

 _I thought I hated you once_ , she thought. _How do I feel about you now? How do you feel about me? Why are we just finding each other again now after all these years?_

 

Jisoo turned the lights off and then climbed in under her covers beside him. She turned on her side and lay there, watching his back and pressing her lips together.

 

 _We graduate in less than a month, and you're going to med school. I don't know where I'll be,_  she thought. _Why are we just finding each other now that we have to leave?_


	25. Maybe You Should Be Alone

“Jisoo?” 

 

She woke up to someone lightly shaking her shoulder. It was early, and the light filtering in through her window blinds was gray and colorless. Jisoo’s eyes opened slowly and found Jinyoung’s face in front of hers. He had somehow climbed over and was kneeling on the ground by her bed.

 

“I am _literally_ the worst,” he whispered, laughing gently. 

 

The events of last night came flooding back to her as she came to. Jisoo pouted sleepily.

 

“You fell asleep,” she said groggily, pulling the covers closer to her chest. Jinyoung’s hand rested on her shoulder and he was rubbing soothing circles against her arm. 

 

“I’m _so_ sorry,” he whispered. “I underestimated how tired I was.”

 

Jisoo stretched in bed and sighed. “It’s okay, I guess,” she said, still feeling a light haze of drowsiness. Jinyoung touched her face gently, tracing one of her eyebrows with his finger. 

 

“I have to go now,” he whispered. Jisoo opened her eyes.

 

“You _have_ to?” Jisoo asked. “It’s Sunday.”

 

“I have the morning shift at the convalescent home,” Jinyoung said. “It starts at dawn, and I need to get home and shower. Technically, I’m already late.”

 

 _Better late than never_ , Jisoo thought, smiling gently at the memory. She rolled over in bed and buried her face in her pillow, groaning. Jinyoung laughed and leaned his forehead against her shoulder. 

 

“I have to go,” he said as Jisoo rolled back over to look at him, pouting.

 

“So what you’re telling me is,” Jisoo said. “Not only are you going to ruin my plans for last night, but you’re going to ruin my morning cuddle plans, too?”

 

Jinyoung smirked. “We can do it again another time,” he whispered, moving a lock of hair out of her face. “I won’t fall asleep, but maybe you should try to be ready _before_ I come over.”

 

“It takes a lot of work to look this good,” Jisoo said, closing her eyes against the light from the window. 

 

“It’s still early,” Jinyoung whispered. “You should sleep in a little more. And try to actually leave your room today. Even if you _are_ writing, you should stretch your legs and eat and… see sunlight.”

 

Jisoo nuzzled her pillow as she nodded. “Mhmm, yup.”

 

He wasn’t convinced that she was actually going to take his advice, but he supposed that Jisoo, being Jisoo, was going to do things her own way no matter what. Stubborn girl. She laid there with her eyes closed, breathing deep and staying so still that Jinyoung though she really had drifted back to sleep. But when he moved to stand up, her voice broke the silence. 

 

“Jinyoung, I like you.”

 

He froze and then looked back at Jisoo, whose whispered declaration had caught him off guard. Her eyes were still closed and she hadn’t moved and it was as if she’d never spoken. But then Jisoo opened her eyes slowly, wanting to see how he’d react, and she found him looking tenderly at her. 

 

It was clear that he had feelings for her that went beyond the platonic. He respected her and admired her determination and he wanted to see her take the future by storm and grow as a person and achieve her dreams. And she had made it clear that she wanted those things for him, too. He thought she was funny and spirited and beautiful and he was intensely attracted to her.

 

In the months that followed their reunion after their teacher’s death and after putting their old rivalry to rest, Jisoo had become one of Jinyoung’s best friends. Which only confirmed what he had secretly believed for years: that they were meant to be friends even long before. Jinyoung wondered what their relationship might be like today if they hadn’t misunderstood each other in middle school and if they hadn’t fought each other so fiercely in high school. He wondered where they might be today if they’d had those ten years to fall in love.

 

Because god knew that they weren’t quite there yet.

 

They had a _lot_ of catching up and making up to do for those years they wasted hating each other. The past couple of weeks they’d spent together felt like a whirlwind of years of pent-up feelings rushing at them all at once, confusing and overwhelming them. Yet he had confidence—hope—that they would get there someday if they stayed together.

 

Jinyoung looked down at Jisoo, taking in her tired eyes and her messy hair, remembered the sound of her groggy voice in the stillness of the morning, remembered the warmth of her body from last night. Then he bent down, kissed the corner of her mouth and whispered into it:

 

“I more-than-like you.”

 

Jisoo felt her whole body go soft at the sound of his words. She felt so giddy all of a sudden that she had to turn around and pretend to be sleepy again so that he couldn’t see her smiling like an idiot into her pillow. Jinyoung, amused, rose to his feet and bid her goodbye again. He was just about to walk out the door when something caught his eye, however.

 

The notebook from last night. Jisoo had put it back on her desk. Jinyoung turned and saw that Jisoo was still turned away. Feeling mischievous, he plucked the notebook from her desk and then departed from her bedroom as quiet as a ghost.

 

Out in the hall, the apartment was quiet. It was still quite early. Last night, he did remember hearing the door open and Lisa and Rose return home from a night of partying in the dead of night. He was still in the throes of sleep then and had chosen to ignore them.

 

Jinyoung made his way over to the front door as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to wake anyone, and it would be awkward if he ran into any of Jisoo’s roommates. He’d spent the night in her bedroom, after all, so he knew exactly what they would assume and he wanted to save Jisoo the trouble if he could. 

 

He was just in the middle of putting his shoes back on, however, when the front door opened and in walked Jennie. 

 

She was startled to see Jinyoung standing there, with a wrinkled sweater, a flushed face, and messy bedhead. He had the same exact look of shock on his face that was on hers.

 

Jennie was clutching her heels in one hand and had her card key in the other. Her makeup was a little smeared, and her bedhead was just as bad as his, but the most impressive that was that she was wearing an oversized shirt that Jinyoung knew belonged to Jackson. Jennie cocked a brow at Jinyoung as he nervously bid her a good morning and then slipped past her. Jennie watched him walk away, endlessly amused as she wondered just what Park Jinyoung was doing at their apartment last night.

 

 

 

 

 

Once Jinyoung was back in his own room, he showered and changed into a fresh outfit. Then he joined the rest of the caregiving staff downstairs to prepare the residents’ breakfast. The work wasn’t particularly hard. Because he’d arrived late, the only work that was really left to be done was to clear tables and help wash dishes. Afterward, he helped move some of the wheelchair-bound residents to the sitting area, and then he was asked to go through the rooms and help make up beds. 

 

Tedious work, but they were tasks that Jinyoung was able to carry out without much mental demand, leaving his mind free to think about other things. He did a quick run-through of his to-do list, which included things like returning a library book that was already overdue a month, checking in with the school registrar to make sure his application for his degree had gone through, contacting Cheonbyul University informing them of his decision and then calling his mother to let her know the good news.

 

When his shift was over, he went back up to his room and leaned against the door, sighing.

 

It felt good knowing where he would be next year, felt good to have another bit of his path cleared up for him. Jinyoung smiled, thinking about where his life had been just a few months ago.

 

A few months ago, he was living on Jackson’s couch, shamelessly crying his eyes out over a girlfriend who cheated on him with one of his best friends, and had not one damned clue where he was headed next year. 

 

Now, he had a spot at one of the most prestigious schools of medicine in the country and another chance at love. He felt sick with happiness at the thought. 

 

He wished he had decided to just blow off his shift and stay with Jisoo that morning, fulfilling her “cuddle plans.” When he checked the time on his phone, it was already past noon, making it too late to go over now and slip back into the bed with her without her roommates noticing. Besides, he thought, she’d have work to do.

 

Which reminded him that he had swiped her top secret notebook.

 

Jinyoung went over to where he had dropped the notebook onto his bed. It was thin and cheap and obviously new, but Jisoo must have handled it so much and written so much in it in the last few days that it was starting to look old. The pages were crinkling from the all the ink pressed in. Curious, he sat on his bed, opened it to the first page and started reading.

 

Then a few slips of folded paper slid out from between the pages. Jinyoung picked them up, straightened them out, and started reading them, too. It was a short story written just recently by Sandra Park. Dara, he thought.

 

He looked between the words on Dara’s draft and the inked words on the page, and he started to notice something strange.

 

 

 

 

 

Jisoo stared blankly at Julie’s email, asking her to come into her office for a quick discussion on Wednesday when Dara stormed out of her office and leaned over Jisoo’s desk, fuming.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

 

Jisoo gasped and killed her computer’s screen. _Holy shit_ , she thought. Jisoo’s eyes looked at her dead screen and then down at the magazine mock-ups that were still on her desk and then at the box of old Embrace issues under her desk. Dara’s stare was hard and cold.

 

“I said, what do you think you’re doing?” Dara said.

 

 _Oh my god_ , Jisoo thought. How did she find out? Jisoo’s throat stiffened and fear made her seize up. How did she find out?

 

“Dara,” Jisoo said, hyperventilating. “I… I am _so_ sorry… please just let me—”

 

“Were you the one who booked Chiaroscuro for catering at the big meeting?” Dara’s eyes narrowed at Jisoo, but the junior staffer was confused.

 

“What?” Jisoo said.

 

Dara slammed down a piece of paper that Jisoo recognized as the memo she had sent out to all the relevant members of staff. She pointed at the last sentence on the page, informing everyone that catering would be provided by Chiaroscuro, the classy catering company that Jisoo found online.

 

“You booked Chiaroscuro?” Dara said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

Jisoo looked at the memo and then at Dara, scouring her brain for the right thing to say.

 

“Is… was that a mistake?” Jisoo asked. Dara groaned.

 

“We did Chiaroscuro at the meeting last year, and everyone got food poisoning!” Dara said. “And your bright idea was to invite them to provide catering _again_?”

 

Jisoo sat, glued to her seat. “I… wasn’t here last year,” she said.

 

“Then you should have asked me first,” Dara said. “Or did some research. Cancel the booking, find some more options and then send them to me. This is your job! God, do I have to do _everything_ around here?”

 

Dara turned and walked back into her office, leaving Jisoo with the memo and instructions to cancel Chiaroscuro. She sighed, picking up the piece of paper and looking down at the sentence she’d written. Then Jisoo looked back at Dara through the window of her office and shook her head. 

 

She could have easily just told her in a plain voice to cancel the booking and find another company to provide catering. Jisoo didn’t know why Dara insisted on storming out of her office and making a scene, embarrassing her in front of the rest of the staff. Chat rooms existed and so did email. She didn’t even need to leave her office, she could have just sent her a rude email, and at least Jisoo wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of being scolded like a high school intern. It seemed to her as if Dara was actively looking for opportunities to walk out and scream at her. 

 

Still. As rude as Dara was, did that mean that she deserved what Julie was planning for her? Did that mean that she deserved what Jisoo was helping Julie do to her?

 

Jisoo felt sick every time she thought about it. She felt like she was being torn apart from the inside, being torn apart by her conscience’s bare hands. All weekend long, she had racked her brain for an answer to this dilemma. She had searched and searched for alternatives. 

 

“Jisoo?” called a sweet voice that made Jisoo flinch. She didn’t have to turn around to know that it was the managing editor who was beckoning her into her office.

 

Jisoo rose up from her desk slowly. She crossed the floor and followed Julie into her office. Once the door was locked securely behind her, Julie started to talk.

 

“It’s Wednesday,” she said, smiling as she leaned against her desk. “The big meeting is a week from today. You know the plan?”

 

Jisoo stood stark in the middle of the room, arms pressed tight against her sides and hands bunched into fists. “Yes, ma’am,” she said with cold distant. 

 

Julie tilted her head at her. Jisoo knew now not to be fooled by her sugary tone or her deceitful smile. She dusted off her sleeve.

 

“What was that Dara was yelling at you about just now?” she asked. Jisoo swallowed and her voice was low as she replied.

 

“The catering,” she said. “I have to cancel Chiaroscuro.”

 

Julie Kiyoko raised her brows and clicked her tongue with disappointment.

 

“What a trivial issue to raise her voice over,” she said. “I’m sure she could have taken care of it herself.”

 

Julie pushed herself off her desk and walked to stand in front of Jisoo. She reached out and took the younger girl’s hand, willing her to let go of her fist. She gave Jisoo an earnest look, eyes full of apologies. 

 

“I’m very sorry she did that to you, Jisoo,” she said softly. “You don’t deserve that. You’ve been doing a marvelous job for us. And I am _especially_ glad to have you on board. You don’t know what it means to me to have your help with this. I’m so grateful to you.”

 

Jisoo had kept her eyes on the carpet the entire time, trying to retreat, trying to disappear into her own mind the way she always did. But the private world of her own mind provided no comfort now. It was the battlefield where her conscience fought her.

 

The only reply Jisoo gave to Julie was to slowly take her hand out of the older woman’s grip. Julie pressed her lips into a thin line, growing tense.

 

“Don’t worry,” Julie Kiyoko said, sighing. “Just a little bit longer, and you’ll _never_ have to endure another one of her outbursts. You’ll be a treasured, respected member of our team. And you’ll be _my_ associate managing editor. A fresh start for the both of us. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

 

Jisoo gave a slight nod, but she didn’t look up from the carpet. 

 

“You don’t look well,” Julie said, her voice colored with concern. “Have you had lunch yet? You should eat.”

 

The truth was Jisoo hadn’t eaten very much at all for the past few days. She spent most of her time holed up in her room, doing Julie’s dirty work and fighting her own common sense. She was battle weary from this whole situation. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, but every time she convinced herself she was going to back out of Julie’s plan, fear seized her and bullied her back into submission.

 

“I haven’t been hungry lately,” Jisoo replied. 

 

Julie looked at Jisoo’s pallid complexion, took notice of her greasy hair and her tired eyes. She pulled her mouth into a smile.

 

“This wouldn’t happen to be because you’re having second thoughts, right?” Julie asked.

 

Jisoo bit the inside of her cheek. _Tell her you’re done_ , she thought.

 

“I… I just—” she stammered.

 

“Because I thought we came to an agreement, already,” Julie said, taking a step forward and raising her voice. “You know what’ll happen, don’t you, if you back out of the plan now? Besides, you’re already buried too deep. You can’t stop me now without dragging yourself down with me.”

 

 _Don’t do it_ , the voice inside her kept saying. _This isn’t right, Jisoo. You know it’s not. Don’t do it_.

 

 _But if you don’t_ , said another voice. _Your fate is sealed. Your dream dies_. _You’ll never be a writer_.

 

Julie came closer and whispered into her ear. “Good girl. Now, bring me the notebook, I’d like to see how far along we are in the plan.”

 

Julie turned and walked back to her desk. 

 

“The notebook?” Jisoo said, looking up from the carpet and panicking. 

 

“You know the one,” Julie said, picking up a small bottle of lavender-scented hand sanitizer and squirting a bit into her palm. “Where is it? Didn’t I tell you to keep it with you at all times?”

 

“I think… I left it at my apartment,” Jisoo said. Julie cast her an alarmed look.

 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she said. “ _Go get it_!”

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as her lunch break started, Jisoo bolted out the doors of the Embrace offices and headed for the station. She boarded a train and got off at the right stop and then speed-walked in her heels over to the apartment. She fished around in her purse, searching for her card key when someone called out:

 

“Jisoo.”

 

Still frantically searching for her card key, Jisoo turned to greet whoever had called her name and saw Jinyoung walking toward her. He had a stern look on his face that was hard to decipher. 

 

“Jinyoung?” Jisoo said, taking a step toward him. “Hi. Uh, I don’t have a lot of time, I’m actually not home early, I just left something on my desk—“

 

“You mean this?” he held up the cheap paper-bound notebook that Jisoo had last seen on her desk. Her eyes grew wide seeing it in his hands. She stepped toward him and gasped.

 

“How did—why do you—?” Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him. “I told you not to touch that. Give it to me.”

 

She tried to reach over and take it from him, but she was slammed with a bout of deja vu, as Jinyoung moved the notebook out of her reach. His eyes glared at her.

 

“Tell me what it is, first.”

 

Jisoo gulped.

 

“It’s nothing important, don’t worry about it,” she tried to insist. She held her hand out. “Give it to me.”

 

Her fishy behavior wasn’t filling Jinyoung with confidence. He knit his brows as he looked down at the notebook and then again at her.

 

“I used that free subscription you gave me to Embrace,” he said. “I looked through their online archives. Why are you filling this entire notebook with Dara’s old stories?”

 

Jisoo’s heart was beating hard against her chest. She deliberated whether or not she should tell him the truth. But she was already so disgusted with herself that she couldn’t bear the thought of Jinyoung hating her, too. She’d already been through that, and she didn’t want to bring it back to life, not now after they’d laid all their bad feelings to rest.

 

“It’s a writing exercise,” she lied.

 

“It’s suspicious,” Jinyoung snapped. “What do you need it for?”

 

The minute he noticed that Jisoo was copying down Dara’s writing, it struck a chord in him. This was all too suspiciously similar to a certain crime novel’s plot about a writer who framed another writer of stealing his work. 

 

“It’s nothing,” Jisoo said.

 

“If it’s nothing, then why can’t you tell me?” he said, raising his voice. Jisoo stiffened her jaw.

 

“Because you wouldn’t understand,” she said. 

 

“Why?” Jinyoung demanded. 

 

All the anger Jisoo was feeling toward herself was rising up to the surface. With his last demand, something inside of her snapped. All the pent up anger and frustration that she was holding back came rushing out.

 

“Because you aren’t me,” Jisoo spat. “And you don’t know what I’m going through or what’s at stake or how much pressure I’m under and what I would have to give up, and even if I did tell you, I know you’d just sneer and judge me because _that’s what you do_ when people don’t meet your expectations.”

 

 She could feel angry tears stinging her eyes. 

 

“I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “If I did, you would hate me.”

 

Jinyoung’s expression was stone cold. “Maybe you should let _me_ decide that,” he said.

 

Jisoo didn’t answer. She eyed the notebook in his hands through the unspilt tears, breathing jaggedly.

 

“Just tell me that whatever it is you’re doing, it isn’t dishonest,” Jinyoung said, his voice turning soft for a change.

 

She wished with all her being that she could tell Jinyoung that it really was just a writing exercise. But to do so would be a lie, and she was so sick and full of lies already.

 

“I can’t.”

 

Her heart broke as she watched the expression of his face changed from anger to disappointment. It was a look that she all too familiar with. She was losing him.

 

“Don’t do this,” Jinyoung begged with a firm voice. “Even if you hate Dara, don’t do it. You’re better than this, Jisoo. This isn’t you. Just walk away now. Whatever the aftermath is, however big the storm is, you can get through it and I’ll brave it with you, but don’t do this.”

 

Jisoo felt stupid. She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how she could make him see. All she could do was shake her head slowly.

 

“I can’t.”

 

And then Jinyoung’s disappointment turned back into anger. He looked at Jisoo and once again saw the girls of his dreams disappearing behind the shadows of her own. He wished he could rewind everything and go back to that night in her bedroom. Or even up to the morning after. Everything had been so beautiful then, and he couldn't believe how quickly it had all gone bad. Just a couple of days. That was all it took for it to change again. He wanted the Jisoo from that night back. If he could go back, he'd have blown off his shift and stayed with her and tried harder to talk her out of this. But he could see now that there was nothing to be done.

 

“Then neither can I,” he said, and he shoved the notebook back into her hands. He couldn’t bear to touch that thing any longer.

 

“If you want to sacrifice your own morals on the altar of your dreams, then go ahead,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’m not sticking around to watch. I supported you and I supported you going after what you want, but _this_ I won’t support. I can’t.”

 

Jisoo tightened her grip on the notebook. Her blood was hot as it coursed through her body. Those tears she held back spilled over as her anger came to a boil.

 

“Then _don’t_ ,” she said through grit teeth. 

 

Jisoo wiped at her eyes. If this was the end of it, if her short romance with Jinyoung was ending here, then she wanted to be sure that he at least understood her in this moment. She resented that he thought she _needed_ him. She resented that he thought that leaving and withdrawing his support was going to hurt her. If being single for twenty-two years had taught her anything, it was that she didn’t _need_ anyone. 

 

“It’s not as if I need your support anyway,” she said, her voice breaking from the weight of her anger. 

 

“ _Newsflash_ , Jinyoung,” she said, scoffing. _“No one_ has ever believed in me. Not you, not my dad, not Dara. Sure, everyone always told me that I could do anything I wanted and that I should chase after my dreams, but no one ever really means it.”

 

Jisoo laughed at her own pitiful self.

 

“No one _actually_ wants me to be a writer,” she said. “What they want is for me to stop dreaming and _grow the fuck up_ and get a soul-sucking, spirit-crushing nine-to-five job kissing customers’ asses over the phone day in and day out until I’m sixty-five and too old and tired to even _think_ about writing again, or until I die, whichever comes first.”

 

Jisoo had often pictured herself trapped in a cubicle under harsh white lighting, putting on a mask just to get through another miserable day, and never fulfilling the potential that she knew lived inside her. 

 

The thought absolutely _terrified_ her. That would kill her, she thought.

 

She remembered every time her father gently dissuaded her from dreaming. She remembered all the times her classmates laughed and told her that writing wasn’t a real job. She remembered all the patronizing smiles her teachers had given her when they told her that she might change her minds years from now. She remembered every single time Dara called her the new girl and told her that she would never publish anything. She remembered every sleepless night she spent trying to comfort her wounded spirit and get it ready to face another day of people telling her to give up.

 

But she knew that this was her destiny. She knew it every time she felt the rush of a new story overwhelm her. She felt it with every heartbeat that rocked her core when she was in the middle of a writing session. She felt it in the quiet and in the darkness when the physical world faded away and her soul was free to drift freely through the worlds of her own creation. 

 

It was magic. It was agony. It was religion. It was true love.

 

She _loved_ writing. Her skin was paper, her blood was ink, and every breath was an entire galaxy of possibility. In her mind, there was no other path for her. No other way to happiness. No other way to live her truth. 

 

“They want me to _settle_ ,” Jisoo said wiping her stubborn, stupid tears again. 

 

“No. That’s not me. I’m not a settler,” Jisoo said, all of a sudden seized by quiet panic. She shook her head.

 

“This is _my_ dream. Mine,” she said. “This is the dream Mama gave to me, the only thing I have left of her, and its mine alone now that she’s gone. All these years, I kept it alive on my own. All these years, I’m the one who cherished it and nurtured it, _by myself_ , and I did it without anyone else’s support.”

 

She watched Jinyoung, but his expression never changed. He shook his head and before he turned and left her standing there, he said:

 

“Maybe you _should_ be alone, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm. Jisoo kinda sucks right now. I'm aware that everyone hates her, lol, but there are more chapters to come. I'll update soon. Thank you for reading!


	26. Goodbye, Dream

Nearly two weeks passed, and Jinyoung kept his word: Jisoo hadn’t seen or heard from at all in the days that followed their confrontation.

 

His words rung in her ears all day and all night: _maybe you should be alone_.

 

Jisoo reached behind the computer monitor and shut it off with the push of a button. It was evening, and she was getting ready to head home. Tomorrow was to be the big day.

 

As she made her way to the elevator lobby, Jisoo thought of what Jinyoung said. She could remember everything about the confrontation, right down to the inflections in his voice as he delivered those heavy words, right down to the grave look on his face as he shook his head and walked away.

 

What Jinyoung mean was that, as much as Jisoo attributed her perpetual singleness to having ridiculously high standards and forever shopping around for the perfect man, deep _deep_ down, maybe the real reason she was alone for so long was because it was better for her to be alone than to hurt people with her selfishness. That she was too selfish to have a relationship with anyone.

 

And what made it hurt even more was that Jisoo felt, deep down, that he was right. As usual.

 

But is it selfish to have a dream? Jisoo thought as she boarded her train and sat down for a long journey homeward. Is it selfish to pursue a dream as wholeheartedly as she pursued hers?

 

 _You’re an idiot,_ said the voice in Jisoo’s head. _This is wrong and you know it. This is Song Mino all over again, and you’re falling for it. Just tell someone. Tell Dara. Do something._

 

 _You can’t_ , said another voice _. It’s too late anyway. Everything is going down tomorrow, and you’re not invited to the meeting. It’s all in Julie’s hands now_.

 

 _You can still stop it. Tell Dara. Tell someone. You’ll be a fraud and you’ll lose Jinyoung forever if you don’t_.

 

_But if you do, you’ll lose Embrace. You’ll lose your dream. You can’t turn Julie in without dragging yourself with her._

 

Jisoo was so lost in her troubled thoughts that she almost missed her stop. She jumped out onto the platform and accidentally bumped into a girl who shoved her away. She made her way through the station and back up to the street on shaky legs and started to walk in the direction of her apartment. She felt drained and tired, as she had ever since Julie Kiyoko had recruited her for her sick plan to get revenge on Dara.

 

The moral battle taking place in her heart was consuming her. She lost her appetite and was always too restless to sleep at night but then too tired to work in the morning. Her irritability had gotten her into more than one cat fight with two of her roommates, and she had headaches all the time. She didn’t know if she wanted to just turn herself in a long with Julie or just wait until it was past tomorrow.

 

And she missed Jinyoung. There were several times in the two weeks that followed their confrontation that she wanted to call him or show up on his campus again and tell him that she was sorry. But she held herself back each time, telling herself that it was over. That she’d disappointed him for the last time. She remembered the cold disgust in his eyes when he told Nawon to go to hell. If she tried to apologize now, Jisoo knew what kind of reply she would get from him.

 

He’d never take her back now. Even if she did decide to call this whole plan off. It’s all over.

 

Jisoo waved her card key in front of the sensor and let herself into her apartment. Jennie was sitting on their blue couch watching something on her laptop when she walked in. Her friend sat up and gave Jisoo a suspicious grin.

 

“So, there’s a surprise for you in your room,” Jennie said as Jisoo shut the door. Jisoo shrugged her bag off her shoulder and set it down by the shoe rack.

 

“A surprise?” she said.

 

“Mhmm,” Jennie said, giggling. “I didn’t know when you’d get back from work, so I told him he could just wait in your room.”

 

Jisoo froze.

 

“Him?” she said, eyes wide. A boy? Jinyoung?

 

“Yupp,” Jennie said. “He’s been waiting a while, so you’d better go—,”

 

Jisoo didn’t even wait for Jennie to finish before dashing down the hall toward her bedroom. Her heart started pounding as her legs brought her closer. She grabbed the door knob and burst into her bedroom to find a man sitting at her desk, dressed in worn out jeans and a khaki jacket, his balding head resting against her chair. Jisoo gasped.

 

“Appa,” she whispered in surprise. A smile broke across her father’s face as he rose to greet her with a hug. Jisoo threw herself into his embrace.

 

 

 

 

“Why’d you come up so early?” Jisoo said. She had taken her father out to a restaurant for dinner so they could talk. She thought of taking him someplace fancy to impress him with her new city lifestyle, but they ended up at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant without a name that served typical Korean street fare. It was small and humid and intimate. They sat on low stools with chipping paint, and Jisoo decided that she liked this option better. It felt more like a place she and her father might eat at if they were back in their hometown.

 

“There’s still two weeks until graduation,” she said, taking a napkin and laying it in her lap. Her father chose to tuck his into his collar.

 

“I thought I’d surprise you,” he said, smiling with his slightly yellowed teeth. “Nothing much is happening back home, and I missed you.”

 

Jisoo smiled. Although she didn’t want to end up stuck at home her entire life, she did still miss her father. She missed his easy smile, his terrible jokes. She missed his awkward dancing and his trot music blasting in the living room on Sunday mornings. She missed his earthy smell and his gruff voice. He was familiar and comfortable, a soothing presence.

 

“Well, you know I do still have work,” Jisoo said. “And I have to study for finals and then take exams. I won’t have a ton of time to show you around.”

 

There were quite a few sights that she wanted to show him. Her father wasn’t in the city very often, mostly because he hated the city with a burning passion. In fact, she was surprised he showed up this early and opted to spend two extra weeks there. It couldn’t have been cheap, either.

 

“That’s alright,” he said as a wait brought them a pitcher of water and cups. “I’m not that interested in seeing it. Frankly, I don’t know why _you’re_ so drawn to it.”

 

Jisoo laughed gently. She remembered how he had stared at her blankly when she announced that she wanted to go to college in the city and fulfill her dream of being a cosmopolitan city girl. After years of being Kim Peachu, Jisoo wanted to be someone else.

 

“I like what I like, Appa,” she said, taking a drink of water. “It’s not so bad.”

 

Ordinarily, she didn’t like to bring the topic up. It was sensitive territory, and the last thing she wanted was for him to try and talk her into coming back home for good. God knew that she had enough on her mind without having to feel guilty about neglecting him, too. It wasn’t as if she was going to abandon him completely, she thought. Lots of children move out of their childhood homes when the time comes to chase after their own prospects.

 

A waiter brought a pan full of noodles, soup, and vegetables and placed it on the electric stove-top between Jisoo and her father. They waited for the brew to come to a boil.

 

“I guess I’ll have to get used to it,” her father said, looking into the soup. “Since you’ll be working here and all.”

 

Jisoo looked up at him with a puzzled expression. She held her breath. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

 

“Do you mean… you’re okay with me staying here?” she said.

 

She watched as he gave her a slightly sad smile and poked at the noodles with his chopsticks.

 

“You’re getting too old for me to tell you what to do, anyway,” he said. “The tighter I try to hold on to you, the more you’ll squirm to get free, too.”

 

Jisoo felt a surge of gratitude overwhelm her. She smiled at him and let the warmth spread through her. She didn’t realize just how badly she’d longed for him to say those words to her until now.

 

“You really don’t know how much it means to me that you’re okay with me staying here,” she said. “I really thought I was going to have to fight to get you to approve or I’d have to disappoint you.”

 

Apparently, she had been doing that a lot, lately.

 

“Disappointed?” her father said, leaning over the table and furrowing his brows at her. Jisoo looked up at her dad with a sad expression, but the look on his face was serious. He held her gaze for a long tie before saying, slowly:

 

“Jisoo, I am so proud of you.”

 

Jisoo swallowed a lump in her throat.

 

“You shouldn’t be,” she whispered.

 

“Why?” her father challenged.

 

If she were to answer that question truthfully—

 

“Because…” Jisoo said, her voice stuttering as she tried to hold her emotions back. “I mean, four years of college and being out here and I really don’t have anything to show for it. Nothing’s really changed about me. I don’t think I’ve gotten any wiser or braver or stronger or smarter. I don’t feel like I deserve…”

 

 _Your pride_. That was what she was about to say, but her voice suddenly cut out, and a long, heavy silence followed. Her father sighed.

 

“Jisoo,” he said. “Do you know how your mother and I met?”

 

“You were schoolmates in high school,” Jisoo said. She’d heard the story before. Her parents’ romantic love story was part of the reason she believed she was categorically obsessed with anything romantic. “You guys started dating and then you got married and you had me. Then Mama got sick.”

 

That was always the one snag in her parents’ love story. It was cut short by her mother’s sudden illness and passing.

 

“Did you know she had already beaten it before she had you?” her father said. Jisoo furrowed her brows at him. She had already beaten it?

 

“No, I didn’t hear that part,” Jisoo said. “What happened, then? She relapsed?”

 

Her father took a deep breath and prepared himself, as he always did when he was going to talk about his dear departed wife.

 

“The doctors warned us that if she got pregnant, it might cause some complications,” he said. “She knew, we both did, that if we wanted children, we had to risk the possibility that she could get sick again.”

 

He recalled his wife’s face, summoned back to his mind from the depths of his memory the image of her in her wedding dress. It took at his strength not to burst into tears there in the middle of the restaurant.

 

“We talked about it for so long, weighing the pros and cons,” he told his daughter. “But in the end, there was no decision to be made, because our minds had been made from the beginning. We wanted _you_. _She_ wanted you. _I_ wanted you.”

 

Her throat tightened as she choked back a sob.

 

“It must have been hard for you to lose her,” Jisoo whispered.

 

“It was,” her father said. “But not as hard as it would have been if I didn’t have you. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, but having you with me made it easier.”

 

He reached across the table and put a hand over hers. Jisoo looked up at her father, who was staring at her very intently.

 

“I love you, Jisoo,” he said. “I have since before you were born. I couldn’t have given your mother up for anyone or anything else if not for you. Every hope I had, every dream I dreamed, I’d give it all up to have you and to give _you_ a chance at life.”

 

Jisoo felt one stubborn tear roll down her face.

 

“The only thing you’ve ever had to do to deserve my pride was be true to yourself.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was obvious now what she had to do. _Mama and Appa didn’t raise a liar_.

 

Her knuckles were white as ghosts as they held onto the edge of the cart. It was loaded with food for the big meeting with Mr. Jeon on the fourth floor. She was standing outside the door, listening through the cracks to Julie Kiyoko explaining to her editor-in-chief exactly what they wanted to do with the redesign of the journal.

 

Jisoo’s heart was racing, but her breathing was even. She had expected a sense of calm to wash over her the minute she made her decision. But on the inside, she was still a mess of conflicting emotions and reactions.

 

 _This is it_ , she thought as she pushed the door open. _Goodbye, dream_.

 

Jisoo walked through the door and pushed the cart inside. She wasn’t assigned to catering. Normally, this was the job of a secretary or a receptionist, but Jisoo wanted an excuse to be in the room so she volunteered for the job. Julie Kiyoko paused mid sentence and stared as Jisoo wheeled the catering cart into the room. Jisoo set it against the wall and started to straighten things out.

 

She didn’t miss Julie’s suspicious pause. No doubt the managing editor was wondering what she was dong there. Jisoo tried not to make it obvious that she was looking at the people in the room. Every seat at the conference table was filled by a man or a woman in a crisp business suit, all eyes on her nefarious managing editor.

 

And there, in the chair right behind her, was Mr. Jeon of Jeon & Sky Publishing himself. Editor-in-chief of every publication housed in this building. And Jisoo needed to speak to him before he finalized the redesign. Before Julie could put her plan into motion.

 

“Mr. Jeon?”

 

Julie paused, and everyone in the room turned to look at Jisoo. She cupped a hand over her mouth. She didn’t realize she had said that out loud.

 

“Jisoo. We’re in the middle of a very important meeting,” said Julie, smiling. “Go back to your work station.”

 

Jisoo was about to turn tail and do as she was told, but something snapped in her. She was going to let this psychopath tell her what to do anymore. Through the cracks, she felt her old fighting spirit coming back to her.

 

“I need to speak with Mr. Jeon,” Jisoo said, more forcefully this time.

 

“My secretary is right outside,” said Mr. Jeon, the silver-haired man in the sleek gray suit. “She’ll take care of you. We’re in a meeting right now.”

 

Jisoo clenched her fists.

 

“I really need to talk to you.”

 

“Jisoo, get out of here!” snapped Dara, who had her arms crossed in the seat between Mr. Jeon and another woman. “Do you _not_ see us in an important meeting right now?”

 

“Dara, I need to talk to you, too.”

 

“Jisoo,” Julie said, taking a step forward and casting a frantic look at the editorial assistant. “We are in the middle of a meeting. _Get out_.”

 

“Get out of here, new girl!”

 

Jisoo clenched her eyes shut and let the truth spill out of her.

 

“Dara, Julie’s conspiring against you,” she said through grit teeth. “She hates that you disagreed with her over the redesign and the new angle for the feature, she’s trying to get you fired—

 

“ _Get out of this room this instant_!” Julie snapped, crossing the conference room toward her.

 

“She made me copy down your draft because she wants to use it to frame you for plagiarism,” Jisoo rambled on. Every eye in the room was on her now, including Mr. Jeon’s. “I have the notebook here, and she’s been making me invent evidence that you stole it from me—”

 

“ _Shut up!_ ” said Kiyoko.

 

“She’s trying to frame you for plagiarism and have you fired because you were blocking her ideas for the redesign and she’s afraid you’ll get her job—”

 

Jisoo was stopped when Julie Kiyoko, Embrace managing editor, struck her across the face with the back of her hand.

 

The entire room was stunned into quiet. Jisoo cupped her offended cheek with her palm and turned away, in case Julie came for her again. Then, Mr. Jeon stood from his chair.

 

“What the hell is going on here?” he said, raising his voice. When Jisoo looked over, even Dara looked scared. Mr. Jeon was red in the face, and Julie had a scowl so poisonous she could kill with one look. But it was nothing compared to the anger on the editor-in-chief’s face.

 

“This meeting is over,” he bellowed, then he pointed a finger at Julie Kiyoko, Sandara Park, and Kim Jisoo. “I want the three of you in my office. Now.”

 

 

 

 

 

The three women each met with Mr. Jeon separately and then together. He heard their stories. Jisoo confessed everything. With every word out of her mouth, Jisoo felt a little bit of the darkness leaving her. In the end, she expected to feel relieved, light, _better_.

 

But when she exited Mr. Jeon’s office, no longer employed by Embrace, Jisoo felt… practically nothing at all. Just numbness.

 

When Julie left Mr. Jeon’s office, she was railing against anyone and everyone in sight, but when she saw Jisoo sitting in the lobby, a security guard needed to hold her back.

 

“You’re a goddamned fucking idiot,” she said to Jisoo while a security officer led her to the elevator. “You’re fired, too, you know that? Yours and mine, our careers are done. Finished! You’ll never work in editorial _ever_ again!”

 

Jisoo felt nothing when Julie said those things to her. She already knew all that, anyway.

 

It wasn’t until Jisoo was back at her work station collecting her things that she finally felt a stab of emotion. And that was until Jisoo happened to look over at Dara’s office. Through the window, she could see her former direct supervisor crouched over her computer, typing something out on her keyboard.

 

Jisoo felt her throat tighten again. She adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder as she walked toward the open door of Dara’s office.

 

“Dara?” Jisoo whispered, knocking lightly against the doorframe. Dara didn’t look up from her work. Her expression remained the same scowl that she always wore. Jisoo swallowed.

 

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

 

“I know that probably doesn’t mean anything to you,” Jisoo said. “What I did, or almost did was unforgivable. Even though we were never close or anything, I never wanted to hurt you.”

 

Jisoo felt disgusted by how similar her apology sounded to Nawon’s. It matched hers almost word-for-word. Still, she hoped her sincerity reached Dara. She really was sorry.

 

“In any case, I’m still sorry,” Jisoo said, her voice breaking. “If there’s ever _anything_ I can do to make it up to you, _please_ tell me.”

 

Dara didn’t say anything for a long time. But after a beat of silence, she whispered without looking up:

 

“Get out.”


	27. A New Chapter

THREE MONTHS LATER

 

“Yes, I understand that you placed the order before October last year,” Jisoo said in her firmest customer service voice. The man on the other end of the line was shouting, and she was struggling to be heard over his yowling.

 

“Yes, sir, I understand,” she said. “But that deal was for customers who ordered 2,000 pieces of the fluorescent bulb, and the invoice says that you ordered LED. What? No sir, they’re not the same, they’re— no, I’m _not_ the manager. Well, actually—yes, sir, I’ll connect you right away.”

 

Jisoo muted the call and shouted for the manager to take the call in his office. Once the call had been properly patched through, she dropped the phone back down onto the receiver and sat back in her chair. After several minutes of massaging her temples, she sighed.

 

When she looked above her cubicle, she saw the rest of her coworkers hard at work, taking calls and punching numbers into their computers. The clock above their heads showed that it was still only eleven in the morning, and she had another hour left until her lunch break. She sighed and then answered a second call.

 

“Thank you for calling Hanguk Lighting customer service, this is Jisoo speaking, how can I help you today?”

 

 

 

 

 

The weather was starting to get cooler. Summer months back in her home town were notoriously hot and humid, but as she stuck her hand out the car window, Jisoo could feel a change in the air. The humidity hadn’t subsided, but the dampness of the air was colder than before. With the summer over, Jisoo knew that the time for harvest was coming soon. She wondered if her father was bringing the usual hands back this season.

 

After work, she drove back down the road toward Kim’s Peaches and Plums. After three months back home, she starting to settle back into her old routine. Her high school routine. With the exception that geometry and history classes had been replaced by shifts at her new job answering phones at Hanguk Lighting, of course.

 

Other than that, it was back to late afternoon drives down the highway. Back to examining refrigerator contents and coming up with new ideas for dinner. Back to washing dishes while the nightly news played on the TV in the living room. Back to her childhood bedroom, complete with posters of idols on her pink walls. Back to square one.

 

Back to the same-old, same-old.

 

Jisoo’s father walked in through the back door of the house around 7 pm and sat down to the dinner Jisoo prepared. Rice and stew and side dishes that she had picked up from the mart on the way home. They made small talk. Jisoo talked about some office gossip from Hanguk Lighting, and he talked about the upcoming harvest. He tried to get her to balance the books again, and Jisoo nagged him to cave in and digitize his records.

 

The usual things they talked about. Mr. Kim basked in the homely mundaneness of it all. It was small, non-moments like these that he treasured most.

 

When their meal was over, he watched as Jisoo carried the dishes over to the sink and washed them. Meanwhile, he went into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes and into something more comfortable. Arrayed on his chest of drawers were small, ceramic picture frames holding photos of his late wife and Jisoo as a child. She had been a cute baby, and he always knew she would grow up to be an astoundingly beautiful young woman. But he was even more proud that she had grown up to be a good person.

 

When he went back out into the house’s main area and looked for Jisoo in the kitchen, he looked up, through the window, and saw her outside instead. Seated on a worn out couch cushion by the clothesline and the start of the orchard.

 

It was a scene he was familiar with. It had been Jisoo’s favorite reading nook as a little girl, and his wife’s before that. 

 

He was happy to have her back. It was hard when she lived so far away. He missed her too much. He liked walking through the door after a long day at work and feeling content that his daughter was safe inside the house. He liked feeling her presence, liked falling asleep knowing that she was down the hall, tucked into her covers and breathing evenly and deeply through the night. He liked being sure of her.

 

And Jisoo fell back into her old routine with such ease that it was as if she hadn’t ever left. Getting her that customer service job at Hanguk was easy. All he had to do was talk to some old friends around town and get them to pull some strings. Jisoo accepted the position without complaint, and from what he heard thus far, she was doing just fine there.

 

But he could tell that she wasn’t happy.

 

Jisoo’s father slid the backdoor open and stuffed his feet into a pair of outdoor slippers. Then he jumped down from the concrete platform and crossed the distance to where Jisoo was sitting. When he was close enough, he saw that she was reading something. A notebook. An old diary.

 

“You’re reading?” he said.

 

Jisoo looked up, surprised by his sudden appearance. She scooted over on the cushion to make room for hi to sit. Her father plopped down beside her. Jisoo closed the little pink notebook she’d been reading.

 

“I just randomly found them in my room,” Jisoo said, laughing. “I was reading them inside, but then I decided to come out here just because. I do all my big thinking here.”

 

“All your big thinking, huh?” her father said, nudging her arm with his elbow. “What sort of big thinking are you doing?”

 

Jisoo shrugged. Ahead, the sun had just disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving an indigo haze in its wake. She ran her thumb over the spine of the diary she had chosen to read. It was from her middle school days. She had picked it up to read mainly because she knew how much Jinyoung popped up in it. Granted, as a middle school kid, she had mostly written about how annoying or frustrating her was but… she missed him, and this was the best she could do without actually picking up her phone and calling him.

 

There were plenty of times when she almost did. She wanted to call him and go to him as soon as she was fired from Embrace. But she stopped herself from doing it because she convinced herself that she didn’t deserve him. That, and she wanted to prove to herself that she did the right thing because it was the right thing. Not because she wanted him back. She doubted he wanted her back, anyway.

 

“I was just curious about what it was I found so important that I had to write about it,” Jisoo said. “It’s really weird, reading what I wrote back then. My writing style really sucked, don’t know how I decided I was going to be a writer back then. And I was so petty and naive and annoying.”

 

“Give yourself some credit,” her father quipped. “I remember you as a middle school kid, I didn’t think you were so bad.”

 

“As my father, I don’t think your opinion counts,” she laughed.

 

“Or, as your father, does it count the most?” he said.

 

Jisoo laughed, but her voice faded, as did her smile, the longer she looked out at the sky. Her father watched her expression turn sad, and his heart broke a little.

 

“Jisoo, are you happy here?” he asked off the cuff. Jisoo widened her eyes at him.

 

“Yeah, of course, I am,” Jisoo said. Her throat tightened as she said those words. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

“I don’t know,” her father said. “But I know you did love it in the city so much. You were in such a hurry to leave this place when you graduate high school. I’m crazy happy to have you back, but at the same time… I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you to stay here.”

 

Jisoo shook her head.

 

“Appa, I really am happy to be back here,” Jisoo said, turning to look at the rows of peach and plum trees, branches heavy with fruit. The air was scented with them.

 

“I mean, this is my home,” Jisoo said. “If I can’t be happy here, I doubt I’ll be happy anywhere else. Besides… it’s not as if I have anywhere else to go.”

 

Her father nodded. Of course she had told him everything that happened at her previous workplace. At first, he was upset by what Jisoo had agreed to almost do. It was not what he had taught her, it was not the way he had raised her. But seeing how broken she was after losing her job, he supposed that her own guilt and being blacklisted from working in editorial ever again was punishment enough. He let her come home quietly, let her slip back into her old life without a word of complaint.

 

“I know I haven’t been the most supportive of you becoming a writer,” he said quietly. It was one of his biggest regrets as a parents, not being brave enough to trust her with her own dreams.

 

“I know I should have believed in you more, but I was just afraid that you’d get your heart broken if it didn’t work out,” he said. He remembered how devastated Jisoo was, losing Embrace. That was exactly what he had been afraid of.

 

“It’s okay,” Jisoo said, shrugging. “I guess… in the long run, it was exactly the kind of tough love I needed to move on. Move on and grow up.”

 

Jisoo knew, even back then, that she was too far gone in her own vision. She was too much in love with the idea of being a writer. She was too addicted to it. So much so that she was willing to sacrifice her own morals for it. She’d become a slave to it.

 

“I want you to know, though,” her father said. “That I’m happy that you didn’t listen to me.”

 

Jisoo raised a brow at him.

 

“What do you mean?” she said. Her father laughed.

 

“You’re stubborn. Just like your mom was,” he said. “I’m happy that you didn’t let anyone tell you you couldn’t do it. Not even me.”

 

He leaned forward and kissed her temple, and Jisoo felt his warmth spreading to her.

 

“To tell you the truth, though,” he said, his tone changing as he adjusted his seat on the cushion. “I really don’t get why you won’t just do it.”

 

“Do what?” Jisoo asked. “Be a writer? It’s not really something I can just do on my own, Appa. I don’t know the first thing about publishing or finding a literary agent or getting in touch with an editor, andjust blew all my connections to the industry so—“

 

“But, I mean, how hard can it be?” her father said. “Forget all the politics that come with it. Forget the agents and the editors and the publishers for a minute. A writer is someone who writes, right?”

 

Jisoo nodded, laughing a little at the pun he just made. Her father gave her a meaningful look. He reached over and took the diary from her hands. He opened it to a blank page and then placed it back into her palms.

 

“Well, then, why don’t you just write?” he said. “Just like you did in middle school. No Embrace, no editors. Just you and a blank piece of paper. You already _are_ a writer, Jisoo. So, write.”

 

With one last look and a playful wink, he stood from the cushion and went back inside. Jisoo stayed seated there for another minute or two. She looked down at the blank page and never felt more afraid in her life. A blank page, a new chapter. Nothing could be more terrifying.

 

_Or exhilarating._

 

She looked up at the sky again. It was getting darker. The hazy purple sunset was turning into blue velvet, and against what little light was left in the atmosphere, she could see the dark silhouette of Mt. Sol in the distance.

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung didn’t know what to make of his first day at Cheonbyul University’s School of Medicine. All through the summer, he managed to keep a positive outlook. He had chosen to stay in the city during his vacation time to get a head start on apartment and job hunting.

 

Cheonbyul was located just outside the city, closer to the ocean. He managed to find a studio apartment that was part of a six-unit building, a fifteen minute bus ride from campus. He also had a job as a non-medical assistant at a private pediatric practice. He was feeling good going into the start of the new semester.

 

But being stuck in a lecture hall with a hundred more of the brightest minds from around the country was dampening his resolve. One day in, and already he’d been assigned a major paper.

 

Which was why he was sitting into his new studio apartment, staring at the blinking cursor on his screen and thinking about how there was nothing on earth more terrifying than a blank document.

 

After staring at the screen for another twenty minutes, Jinyoung shut his laptop down. Whatever it was he was going to write about for this paper, it wasn’t coming to him tonight, so he was wasting his time. He pulled open the drawer and grabbed a textbook instead. He slammed it down on his desk and then slammer the drawer shut. But as he did, the loose shelf above his desk came crashing down.

 

Thankfully, his head was nowhere nearby, but it did make a mess. The books he was storing there were scattered on his desk and the floor, hardcovers and paperbacks alike. He got down and started to pick them up when one caught his notice:

 

The Higashino book. It had fallen on its spine and it opened to a page marked by a purple flower pressed between a folded sheet of parchment.

 

Just what he needed: another distraction.

 

Jinyoung reached out and plucked the bookmarked from the Higashino novel’s spine. He handled it carefully, laying it down on his desk with the utmost gentleness.

 

He hadn’t seen or talked to Jisoo in months. But he thought about her a lot. Too much, in fact.

 

That day when he confronted her outside her apartment, he left feeling righteously bitter. He had let her get away with too much before, and he wasn’t going to stand by and watch as she threw away her morals a second time. He had convinced himself that a person like that was not something he was even remotely interested in being with.

 

But there was voice inside him, small as it was, that kept telling him that he made a mistake.

 

 _You pushed her away too soon_ , it said. _You didn’t give her a chance. Now you’ve lost yours._

 

He fought back against it. He told himself that Jisoo made her choice. She had chosen wrong, and she chose her own selfish dream over any kind of relationship with him. Besides, he thought, they never got far enough together to even define what their relationship was. She wasn’t his girlfriend.

 

 _Bullshit_ , said the voice. _You loved her_. _You still do. You would take her back if she asked you._

 

Shut up. Jinyoung finished cleaning the books off the floor and set them back on his desk. He made a mental note to borrow some power tools from someone and fix the fallen shelf later. In the meantime, he had studying to do, a paper to write, and no time to think about Jisoo. Whatever they were before, it was over now.

 

What she did was wrong. And for that, he couldn’t forgive her.

 

Jinyoung set the books aside and tried to go back to studying. After a while though, he had to find another place to stow that purple flower bookmark. Every time he looked at it, all he could think about was that time he dropped it in her driveway for her to find. She kept it all these years.

 

It doesn’t mean anything, he thought. She probably just thought it was pretty.

 

 _Or it maybe it meant something to her_ , said the voice.

 

Jisoo may have done something wrong, he thought, but stealing wasn’t right, either. As upset as he was over the situation with Dara, he should still find a way to return the bookmark to her.

 

Perhaps only after getting rid of it would he be able to get over her and turn a new page. A new chapter.


	28. Night Sky

“Rose, are you serious?” Jennie said, hopping over a moss-covered fallen log and heaving her breath. “Every single rock? Seriously?”

 

Rose was dressed in name-brand hiking gear and was perched on top of the sixth really big rock that the girls had crossed on their way up the mountain. She had just dyed her hair a strawberry champagne color and even curled it, knowing full well that they were going on a camping trip and not to a summer at the Hamptons.

 

“Just one more!” she shouted and then gestured for Lisa, who was holding her phone, to take a step back. “Get the whole forest in the shot, I want it to look super nature-y!”

 

Jennie groaned and slowed to catch her breath. Sweat stuck to her forehead and she fanned herself with her hand. “Jisoo, how much further to do have to go?”

 

A little further up the path, Jisoo was covering her phone screen, trying to shield it from the sun and she figured out just where the hell they were. Down at the base of the mountain, a park ranger told them that if they just followed this path, they would get to the camping grounds in about two hours. That is, if they hiked at a steady pace and didn’t stop to take pictures every time they passed a giant boulder. 

 

“Um, I think another mile?” Jisoo said. She took her cap off her head and fanned herself with it. “Or, maybe two? Three?”

 

Jennie marched over and took Jisoo’s phone from her hand. They both started zooming and un-zooming the map only to later find out that their mobile signal had cut out about half-way into their hike and it wasn’t loading anymore. They had to break out a paper map, and they spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to use it.

 

“This is fun!” Rose chimed, climbing down from the giant boulder. She twirled like a ballerina, throwing her arms around. “Ah, the air smells so fresh, we’re hiking and doing cute friendship things. This was _such_ a good idea.”

 

“It’ll be even better once we figure out where we’re supposed to set up camp,” Jisoo said. 

 

After that heart-to-heart with her father, Jisoo decided that she was going to reclaim her time and reclaim her dream. No more moping around and feeling sorry for herself and her lot in life. She was turning a new page. And the first thing she wanted to do was climb this mountain that she’d lived beneath her entire life. For once, she wanted to be on top of it. 

 

Getting her friends on board wasn’t part of the plan, but it was a pleasant improvisation. She had gotten them all on the phone in a four-way call so they could catch up. Jisoo just happened to slip he plans to go camping into the conversation, and soon it turned into a girls’ trip. She was beyond happy to see them all again, but she was reminded just how chaotic things could be when they were all together. Not that she minded too much. If she was going to get lost in the woods, she’d rather be lost with her friends. 

 

Lisa took to the hiking pretty well. She was always the sportier one of the four, and she’d already saved Jennie from a garter snake twice (though she insisted they were harmless) and pulled a branch clean off a tree to use as a walking stick. She was also the one constantly calling back to the rest of them to hurry up while she attacked hills and rocky paths with perfect ease.

 

Jennie was trooper, even though they could all tell she wished they had decided to go to Jeju Island or something. She wasn’t a very outdoorsy person, but she kept up with the hiking alright. All those hours she spent at soul cycling classes probably helped with her stamina. 

 

Rose was doing surprisingly really well for a bourgie rich girl who wore her most expensive yoga outfit for the hike. She didn’t even look tired at all, hopping from one big rock to the next, taking selfies and vlogging.

 

Jisoo’s father insisted that she take their family dog, Dalgom, with them. For protection, he said. But about fifteen minutes into the hike, the damn pup was already exhausted. Jisoo had to carry him the rest of the way up. He looked at her with sad, judging eyes while she and Jennie tried to figure out their map.

 

A hike that was only supposed to take an intermediate hiker two or three hours ended up being a six hour hike. In that time, Rose managed to take pictures of herself sitting on eight really big rocks; Lisa had sang through the entirety of “Bohemian Rhapsody” ten times; Jisoo had to stop their hiking party at least a dozen times to let Dalgom pee only to realize that he wasn’t really even peeing but just rubbing his butt on random trees and bushes to mark his territory. She had to pick barbs and leaves out of his fur every single time. They even passed another hairy, shirtless, sweaty hiker who helped them find their way back to the right path and then tried to poach Jennie’s phone number. 

 

 _Jinyoung used to hike this with his entire family?_ Jisoo thought just as the day sank into the afternoon. She tried to imagine being ten years old and making this journey. Knowing how she was as a ten-year-old, she probably would have complained the entire way and beg to climb back down after just twenty minutes. 

 

It was nearly three o’clock when Jisoo started swatting at mosquitoes that were flying toward her face. She stepped behind a line of bushes and found a clearing. She let Dalgom down and he started to sniff at the ground and then whine. She heard the waterfall before she saw it.

 

“Guys!” she called back to the group. “I think we’re here!”

 

Jisoo loosened her grip on Dalgom’s leash as he walked over to the edge of the water to drink. In the forest clearing, the air was much cooler. The ground was rocky but level and the water came gently up to her feet and spilled into a stream on the other end. A steady stream of water fell from above a low cliff-face. The water was clear and cool. 

 

“Ugh! Finally!” Jennie said, pulling up beside Jisoo and catching her breath.

 

“Ooh, it’s so pretty!” Lisa said, pulling out her phone to take a picture. Rose wasted no time at all in stripping down to the bathing suit she wore under her clothes and jumping into the water. Lisa followed after her.

 

Jisoo laughed at the two of them, splattering around in the water. Jennie took her shoes off and chose to wade in gently while Jisoo bent down and gave Dalgom a pat on the head before picking him up and following Jennie in. 

 

 

 

 

 

“We should do this more often,” Rose said, holding her thermos of soup close to her chest. Jennie, mouth stuffed with marshmallow and chocolate, nodded in agreement.

 

Night had fallen. Instead of going to where people usually camped, the girls decided they wanted to stay by the waterfall. So they unfurled their tents and set up camp there. Crickets sang around them as they huddled close to the fire. 

 

Jisoo was holding Dalgom in her lap while she shared a blanket with Lisa. Summer was fading fast and the cold was blowing in at night. She was happy to have her friends to keep her both accompanied and warm. She didn’t realize how much she missed them in the three months since they all went their separate ways. She didn’t realize just how much she’d come to love them in the years they spent together at college.

 

Friends didn’t come easily to Jisoo. Classes in college lasted about four months per semester, and it took her that long to get comfortable with any new person in her life. People always left before they could leave a lasting impression on her or her life. But if the six hours she spent struggling up this mountain with these girls taught her anything, it was that this friendship was here to stay.

 

They spent hours talking about how hard it was to find a post-grad job; the outrageous demands of their landlords and landladies; parents nagging them to get jobs or get married soon; how cute Park Bo Gum looked in his latest drama; the pros and cons of dating a co-worker and starting an office romance; the possibility that Bran Stark was actually the Night King; their first impressions of each other when they first met; the proper way to cook samgyeopsal at a restaurant; and a thousand other trivial topics in between.

 

“I really need to find a job,” Jennie said, leaning against her arm. “Student loans are going to start coming down on me hard in January.”

 

“So you’ve got four months to look,” Rose said, snapping a picture of their campfire. “ _Someone_ will give you a job.”

 

“I applied to this aerospace company,” Jennie said. “As a bookkeeper. It’s not exactly what I want to be doing, but it’s a start.”

 

“You never know what’ll happen,” Jisoo said, sticking a marshmallow onto her skewer and holding it over the flames. “You might get promoted in a year or two. Besides, like you said, we all have to start somewhere.”

 

Like Hanguk Lighting. If someone asked Jisoo to paint a picture of a job she didn’t want, she’d come up with a picture pretty close to Hanguk Lighting. She answered phone calls and talked to unhappy customers all day long and it was sucking her soul out little by little. But she stayed with it anyway, knowing that it was a far better thing to do than waste time being idle at home.

 

“Everyone has to do things they don’t want to do in real life,” Lisa said. “What matters is how you deal with it.”

 

Jisoo and Rose nodded in agreement. She looked around at her friends, looked at the content expressions on their faces and she felt her heart swelling with warmth. She liked this. Being quiet together. 

 

“This has been really great, you guys,” Rose said, smiling with glassy eyes, speaking exactly what Jisoo was thinking. “I’ve missed you. I miss seeing you all every single day. It’s not the same not seeing you all.”

 

Jisoo felt the same way. She was flushed with gratitude, so endlessly thankful that she met these three girls. She looked at them and felt so proud to be able to call them her friends. 

 

“I guess this is our last fun weekend together for a while, huh?” Lisa said. “On Monday, we all have to get back to the grind.”

 

“We really should do this more often,” Jennie said, perking up. “It’s so fun, it’s a nice refresher. And we get to be together again.”

 

“How’d you even hear about this, Jisoo?” Rose asked. The question made Jisoo think about him again. Nowadays, thoughts of Jinyoung only filled her with regret.

 

“A friend recommended it to me, that’s all,” Jisoo said, not wanting to bring the subject of _him_ up. It was too complicated a matter, and she didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere. “I’d never done this hike before, I figured now was as good a time as any to cross it off my list.”

 

“Well, it was a _really_ good idea,” Rose said, reaching over and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for bringing us all together again.”

 

“Woah!” Lisa said all of a sudden. They looked at her but she was staring straight up and pointed at the sky. “Guys, look up! Look! There are so many _stars_!”

 

They all looked up, and sure enough, the sky was dusted with thousands of tiny, shimmering lights. Jennie gasped aloud and Rose was speechless at the sight. Being city girls all their lives, they’d never seen a sky so bright. Looking upwards, they felt surrounded by the stars.

 

“I’ve never seen that many stars before,” Jennie said, her voice coated with wonder. “The sky is so clear.”

 

“Incredible,” Rose whispered. Jisoo smiled at their reactions. Having lived in this remote rural town all her life, Jisoo was so stranger to the sight. But she agreed. It was breathtaking. She remembered all those nights she spent sitting in her reading nook with her mother, and then again after she died. She called to mind everything that the stars meant in every book she read:

 

Light. Darkness. Gods. Heroes. Monsters. Angels. Life. Death. Destiny. Fate. 

 

It was those endless nights staring up into the sky that taught her to dream. 

 

“Do you guys wanna play a game?” she said. “Well, it’s not _really_ a game, it’s just an old writing exercise I used to do myself.”

 

The girls looked at her with blank stares.

 

“How do you play?” asked Lisa.

 

“Well, you pick something and you have to describe it,” Jisoo said, letting Dalgom down to the ground again. “But you have to describe what you _actually_ see and not what you think you’re seeing.”

 

They blinked.

 

“What?”

 

“Like the stars,” Jisoo said, gesturing at the sky. 

 

“Everyone tells us that stars are white or silver, right?” Jisoo said. “But when you look at them, what color do they look like to _you_. Take a look. Jennie, what color do you think the stars are? They’re not silver or white. What color are they to you? Describe them.”

 

Jennie squinted her eyes and stared hard at one section of the night sky. She shrugged.

 

“They look… blue, I guess.”

 

“They’re not all one color, I think,” Rose tried. “They look like… like a glass prism, like they’ve got all the colors in them.”

 

Lisa laughed a little. “This is an interesting exercise,” she said. “Why, what color do they look to you, Jisoo?”

 

Something about the exercise they were doing made Jisoo think about her old vision for her future. She used to think that the path to her living her dream looked one way, but maybe, at second glance, it was something else entirely. When she looked up at the sky this time, she saw what she’d always seen when she looked at the stars: billions of distant balls of gas burning not white or silver or gold, but deep and rich and purple.

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung stepped through the double doors of Jeon & Sky Publishing. It was the first time he’d been to the building since that interview he did with Julie Kiyoko, and he was a little lost. He had to ask someone at reception which floor Embrace was located. 

 

He had Jisoo’s lucky flower bookmark in his jacket pocket because he didn’t want to crush it in his hands, which he had clenched into tight, nervous fists. He had to take two trains and a bus to get back into the city center from where the Cheonbyul campus was located, and throughout the whole journey, he told himself that he was just here to return her precious lucky charm. There was no need to be so nervous. If he wanted to, he could just drop it off with the girl at the reception desk and leave without even having to see Jisoo.

 

 _But you’d be disappointed if you didn’t_ , said that stubborn voice again. 

 

The elevator bell dinged when he reached the designated floor. Embrace looked pretty much the same since the last time he was there. Jinyoung tried to look through the multiple glass doors and over people’s heads to see if Jisoo was at her work station. But when he saw a different girl sitting at Jisoo’s desk, he tightened his jaw.

 

He guessed her plan worked after all and they probably moved her into Dara’s old office. He scoffed.

 

“Excuse me?” said a voice behind him. Jinyoung turned toward the reception desk, but instead of that same girl from before, the receptionist was a young man with a slim frame and big doe eyes.

 

“Do you need some help?” he asked. Jinyoung walked toward the receptionist and cleared his throat.

 

“Are you here for a meeting or something?” asked the boy. 

 

“No,” Jinyoung said, shaking his head. “I just… I just came to drop something off for someone, and then I’m getting out of here.”

 

“Oh,” said the boy. “I can page them to come up to the desk if you want.”

 

“No, don’t,” Jinyoung said, his heart speeding up. “I don’t want to disturb anyone—”

 

“No, it wouldn’t be disruptive at all,” said the boy. “I can just make a quick call and they’ll be up here in a minute.”

 

Jinyoung swallowed. His determination to stay firm in his decision battled with his desire to see her again. It had been months. He wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing Jisoo after so long. He didn’t know how _she_ would react. He let out a deep breath and relented.

 

“Fine,” he said. “Call them up here.” 

 

The boy nodded and went over to the phone. “What’s the name?” the boy asked.

 

“Park Jinyoung,” he said.

 

“No, the name of the person you want to see.”

 

“Oh,” Jinyoung said. “Uh, Kim Jisoo. She’s the editorial—well, I guess she’s in a different position now, the associate managing editor.”

 

The boy was about to dial a number but he furrowed his brow. “Oh, you mean Sunmi?” he said. “She’s the associate managing editor.”

 

Jinyoung creased his brow. “No,” he said. “Kim Jisoo. She’s… I don’t know, I guess she’s still an editorial assistant. Whatever, just get her over here.”

 

He wanted to get this meeting over with. The boy didn’t move, though.

 

“I think you’re confused,” he said. “Lee Sunmi is the associate managing editor, and our new editorial assistant is Lim Nayeon. Are you supposed to be on a different floor?”

 

“This is Embrace, right?” Jinyoung asked. In response, the boy just turned and looked at the wall behind him, where the word “EMBRACE” was written in huge capital letters. 

 

“I can run a search real quick,” the boy said, turning to his computer. He started typing something into the search bar and then scrolled through a page. “Okay, Kim Jisoo, let’s see where you—Oh. Awkward.”

 

“What?” Jinyoung said. The boy turned the screen so that Jinyoung could see.

 

“It says here that her employment was terminated over three months ago,” the boy said, pointing to a section of the screen where red letters spelled out the word “terminated” as if Jisoo were a target that got destroyed. Jinyoung stared at the screen long and hard before the boy turned the screen away from him.

 

“Oh, wait!” the boy said. “Oh my god, I think she’s _that_ Kim Jisoo!”

 

Jinyoung raised his brows. “What do you mean?” he said. “She works here. Where is she? What are you talking about?”

 

The boy clicked his tongue at Jinyoung. “I’m new here so I don’t know the whole story,” he said. “But what I heard was that this girl, Jisoo, got dragged into a scam that the old managing editor, Someone-Kiyoko, spun together to get another employee fired. Her associate managing editor.”

 

Jinyoung blinked in shock.

 

“Anyway,” the boy continued. “I heard that Kiyoko was using Jisoo as a way to get the other editor, Sandara, accused of plagiarism. Which, in our business, is a huge deal, you know? But then this girl, Jisoo, well all the pressure and the guilt got to her. She ratted Kiyoko out _spectacularly_. She waited until the big meeting with Mr. Jeon and spilled everything out in the middle of the meeting, and then Kiyoko clocked her in the face, and then all three of them got dragged into Jeon’s office. An hour later, both Kiyoko and Jisoo got sacked. Tough luck for the two of them, they’ll never find work in this field ever again. But then another kicker: the very next day, the associate editor they tried to frame? Dara? Yeah, she quit.”

 

Jinyoung couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jisoo told the truth? Julie got fired? Dara quit?

 

“Wait, back up,” he said. “You mean Jisoo turned herself in, and Julie with her?”

 

The boy nodded. “Crazy, right?” he said. “I wish I was in the room when that happened. Apparently, it was wild. Jeon went crazy looking for people to replace them all. Now we’re stuck with boring new staffers. Why am I never around when drama happens? Anyway, your girlfriend got fired.”

 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jinyoung said. The boy blinked at him.

 

“Oh, that was just an expression,” he said. “If she _was_ your girlfriend, obviously you’d already know that she got fired. Sorry, can’t help you.”

 

Jinyoung turned around and slowly exited the building. Once he was back out on the street and breathing the crisp night air, his thoughts came rushing to him all at once.  He pictured Jisoo standing in the conference room, spilling the truth, pictured the look on her face when Kiyoko slapped her, pictured her sitting in Mr. Jeon's office, tearfully confessing everything and throwing away her one shot at her dream to protect a someone that she didn't even like. He couldn't imagine how hard a choice that was, how she must have felt. He wished he go back in time and be there for her, to comfort her and tell her that she had done something good and brave. He made such a huge mistake. He felt everything all at once.

 

Relieved. Happy. Confused. Worried. Sorry. Scared.


	29. A Thousand Purple Stars

Jisoo awoke to the sound of Dalgom barking. She groaned and rolled around in the oversized sleeping bag that she shared with Rose and tried to her dog to shut up. They were all bundled up in layers of clothing to combat the nightly chill. Dalgom continued barking. Jisoo’s eyes flickered open stubbornly and she looked around for her dog.

 

“Dalgom-ah,” she said groggily. “Shh, please be quiet.”

 

But the little white dog was still yapping off, barking at a squirrel in the tree. Jisoo groaned.

 

“Dalgom, shut up, please,” she said again. When the barking suddenly died down, Jisoo became alarmed. She shot her eyes open and looked up just in time to see Dalgom escaping his leash and running down the path. 

 

“Shit!” she said, springing up from the sleeping bag. She stuffed her feet into her shoes and took off down the dirt road after the little white dog.

 

“Dalgom-ah!” she shouted after him. “Stop! Get back here! Sit!”

 

How could a dog with such little legs run so fast? Jisoo was already going as fast as she could without tripping over loose stones and raised roots. It must have been very early since the sky was still dim and the world around her was gray and colorless and the air was damp with vapor.

 

“Sit, boy!” she shouted, but Dalgom had disappeared into a thicket, and Jisoo had to run in after him. Branches and leaves scraped her clothing and she threw her arms up to keep the brush from hitting her face. “Ugh, damn dog,” she cursed. She heard him barking again, just a few feet ahead. She prepared herself to pounce on the puppy and trap him in her arms when the bushes and trees cleared away. She found herself in the midst of another forest clearing, a meadow, and she went completely quiet.

 

There were thousands of them. Thousands of small flowers covered every bit of ground as far as her eye could see. Pale purple with petals spread out like rays of light from a star. One thousand pale purple stars exactly like her lucky flower, swaying gently in the morning mist and taking up every bit of space in her line of sight.

 

She didn’t know why she felt so overcome with emotion. They were just flowers after all. She stepped forward carefully, bringing herself closer to the center of the field until she was properly surrounded by the little violet blooms. 

 

Her mind traveled back through time in the few minutes she spent taking in her surroundings. Back through the years who the moment her lucky flower came to her. The moment she crouched in the gravel of her driveway and took its delicate purple petals into her palm and how much better she felt knowing that hope could come from practically anywhere even in the most hopeless of times. 

 

But something was different now about that memory. Looking around at the thousands of purple flowers, the memory became more vivid. The boy’s face became clearer. 

 

Jisoo thought about their date by the river. He was the one who told her she should take this camping trip. He talked about a flower field that he thought she’d like.

 

Jinyoung. He was the little boy.

 

Jisoo crouched down then reached out and touched the soft yellow center of one of the purple blooms and smiled. All these years, she kept that flower as a charm for good luck. Here she was discovering that it wasn’t luck at all, but fate. 

 

 

 

 

 

No more moping around, Jisoo thought. 

 

Her camping trip with friends was exactly the kind of refreshing start she needed to the next chapter of her life. Yes, her situation at Hanguk Lighting and being stuck back on her family farm wasn’t what she had planned for herself after graduation. But as she descended Mt. Sol that day, she made up her mind that she was going to be a writer anyway. To hell with Embrace and to hell with all the red tape and community politics. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for someone to give her a chance anymore.

 

If she wanted to write, she was going to do it.

 

She dug up some of the flowery shrubs from the field and potted them when she got home. She set them on her desk, to remind her to look on the bright side of things. That night, she went home and dug out her laptop computer and all her diaries and all her notebooks. Somewhere buried in all these pages was the story she wanted to tell, the story she had been holding back all these years. She opened up old documents on her computer and revived old plot bunnies, brought back her comatose characters, re-read old random bits of prose, rediscovered old drafts. 

 

For three weeks, she came straight home after working at Hanguk Lighting and sat at her desk, coaxing her novel into existence. She couldn’t sleep from all the ideas running through her brain. She ate here and there but was too engrossed in the story that was coming together to sit down to a proper meal. She kept up appearances for the sake of work, but heart, mind, and soul were purely dedicated to writing.

 

At night, after a long session of drafting and brainstorming and researching, she would sit back in her chair and feel completely spent. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and she flushed with pride over her own work.

 

She had forgotten. 

 

She’d forgotten what it felt like to give herself over completely to a new project. How it could be both exhausting and energizing at the same time. How she could lose herself completely in her writing and lose all sense of space or time. She forgot how good it felt to go to bed after pouring her out into her words, how good it felt to type a period into the last sentence of a chapter and see the finished product. 

 

 _No one is taking this from me_.

 

In just two months, Jisoo had a 175,000-word manuscript. She had set out to write a romance, but the story she held in her hands wasn’t exclusively that. It ended up being a mother-daughter story, a multigenerational mystery novel and a bit of a ghost story with a sprinkling of romance. So many times throughout the writing process, Jisoo surprised herself with what she could come up with. The story had taken her to parts of her mind that she hadn’t explored before, rooms in her world with doors that hadn’t been opened in years. 

 

In the end, looking down at the finished product, she was slightly terrified. There were parts of her in this manuscript that she hadn’t revealed to anyone before. This might be truly the most honest writing she’d done in her life. She didn’t know how people would react. She didn’t know how she would feel letting people into her secret world. 

 

The thought was mortifying. And yet thrilling all at once.

 

 

 

 

 

“Sugar… sugar… sugar,” Jisoo muttered to herself as she wandered the neighborhood grocery mart in search of ingredients to make a cake. It was her father’s birthday, and she wanted to surprise him, so after work, she headed straight to the market.

 

She pushed the cart around absentmindedly as she looked up at the aisle signs, looking for the one that would have sugar stocked. Meanwhile, she grabbed random snacks and foods that caught her attention. Frozen waffles and chocolate bars and bottles of soda. She opened a box of glazed donuts and sneakily started to nibble on one as she searched for the sugar. As she rounded a corner, however, she stopped clear in her tracks. 

 

Dara was standing right in front of her.

 

Jisoo nearly choked on her donut. 

 

“What the fuck?” she accidentally said out loud, and a piece of half-chewed donut fell out of her mouth, along with a bit of drool. Jisoo wiped her mouth with her sleeve as Dara approached. When she got close, Jisoo physically shrank back from her old boss. _What the hell is she doing here?_ Jisoo thought. Her mind started coming up with the wildest reasons for Dara’s appearance at the grocery store. She must have been here to exact revenge. That’s definitely it, she thought. 

 

Dara crossed her arms and grimaced as she looked Jisoo up and down. Jisoo was too tongue-tied to speak. Dara didn’t look as tired as Jisoo remembered her while working at Embrace. She actually had makeup on: a sharp cat-eye liner and red lipstick that made her look like a millionaire. But she was dressed comfortably in a warmer autumn outfit. Jisoo must have looked like an idiot, mutely waiting for Dara to speak. Finally, after what felt like a decade of awkward staring, Dara cleared her throat.

 

“Come with me,” she said.

 

Jisoo asked a grocery clerk to hold her items as she followed Dara to the coffee shop located inside the shop. The coffee was just average, but it was quiet inside, which is probably what Dara was going for. 

 

This whole thing felt so surreal to Jisoo, who still couldn’t get over the fact that her old supervisor was in _her_ hometown, sitting in a coffee shop in _her_ rundown neighborhood grocery mart. This was downright unnatural, and it was kind of creeping her out. Dara was so quiet and cryptic. Jisoo took the seat in front of her carefully, watching Dara’s face for any clue as to what she wanted.

 

“What are you doing here?” Jisoo finally asked, taking a sip of the god-awful coffee. Dara raised her brow.

 

“What?” she said. “Shouldn’t I be allowed to hang around my hometown?”

 

Jisoo nearly spat out the coffee.

 

“ _Your_ hometown?” Jisoo guffawed. “You’re from _here_?”

 

Dara didn’t look like she was in a joking mood. Jisoo guffawed again. 

 

“Oh my _god,”_ Jisoo said, eyes wide. “How did I _not_ know? I thought I knew every country bumpkin around this place. How do I not know you?”

 

This was a pretty small town and it wasn’t hard to know everybody. Jisoo was sure they could all trace their lineage back to the same ten or so families. How did Dara slip under her radar? How did she not know that her boss came from the same town?

 

“I moved out of here pretty early,” Dara said, taking one sip of the coffee and then opting not to drink anymore. “You know, turned 18 and moved out.”

 

Jisoo still couldn’t believe it. The world must be a smaller place than she realized. “Are you staying with your parents, then? Or other family?”

 

Maybe she was deluding herself, but Jisoo could swear she saw Dara’s cold facade crack a bit at the mention of family. But she switched back to her cold demeanor in a hurry.

 

“I’m staying in my old family house if that’s what you mean,” Dara said. Jisoo saw her swallow. “I quit Embrace.”

 

Jisoo’s jaw dropped at that bit of news. Dara quit Embrace? She didn’t say anything for a while, afraid to say he wrong thing.

 

“Did you quit because of what Julie and I were about to do?” Jisoo said quietly. Dara crossed her arms.

 

“Don’t give yourself too much credit,” Dara said, running a hand through her hair and looking out the window. She huffed her breath and Jisoo could see again that she was trying not to show any emotion. 

 

“I was going to quit with or without you,” Dara said without meeting Jisoo’s eyes. “Your little drama was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I _hated_ it there. I _hated_ Embrace.”

 

That surprised Jisoo. She remembered the way Dara was at Embrace. She was always running around trying to get work done. She remembered how fiercely she fought Julie over the redesign, how committed she sounded to keeping the journal devoted to championing quality literature. Jisoo thought for sure that she loved working there. 

 

“Then, why’d you stay there so long?” Jisoo asked. Dara was still looking out the window, though Jisoo supposed that she was really just trying to avoid eye contact. She was pursing her lips and fidgeting with her hands.

 

“You know how it is,” Dara said, her voice surprisingly soft. “You think you’re getting one thing, but then you end up with something completely different. Next thing you know, you’re seven years into a career path you never really wanted, and it’s too late to do anything about it.” 

 

There was a change in the atmosphere all of a sudden. Jisoo felt the thin membrane that covered Dara peeling away, and she saw her cold-hearted boss for what she really was: another broken-hearted dreamer. Jisoo looked at her face and her frown didn’t look so cold anymore. It looked vulnerable.

 

“It was scary, quitting Embrace,” Dara said, forcing herself to gulp down another sip of the terrible coffee. 

 

“I started out as an assistant, too,” Dara said. The glossed-over look in her eye made it look like she was speaking her story out to the universe rather than to Jisoo specifically. 

 

“I wanted to be a writer,” she said. “I thought I was gonna get to write novels about sweeping romances or even murder mysteries or fantasy adventures, maybe a memoir. Turns out, Embrace just bogs down your creativity and turns you into an office bot. But I was the associate managing editor, and they needed me so badly. And I had bills to settle, a degree to pay for, and stingy landlords knocking on my door asking for rent.”

 

She grimaced again, thinking about the four years she wasted doing work that she didn’t find fulfilling at all. But then her face softened.

 

“It wasn’t all bad, I guess,” Dara said. “I loved talking to our writers. They all had such great ideas, so inspirational. It felt good being able to support them. I realized that’s what I wanted to do. Help writers get their books published. An agent, or an editor, or a publisher. Or all three.”

 

Jisoo felt so humbled all of a sudden. It couldn’t have been easy for Dara to let her guard down like this. She felt sorry, suddenly, that she’d been misunderstanding all this time. Though of course, if Dara hadn’t been so rude to her, they could have made much better use of their time together.

 

“I didn’t know that about you,” Jisoo said, downing the rest of her room-temperature coffee. “I feel like we actually have a lot more in common than you let on.”

 

She had expected Dara to smile, but instead, her old boss just cocked a brow at her. Jisoo smirked. Of course, Dara would always be Dara.

 

“Can I ask you a candid question?” Jisoo said, leaning forward and casting off her inhibitions. “We’re not boss and employee anymore.”

 

This seemed to pique Dara’s interest. “What?”

 

“I read all your stuff—”

 

“You mean, back when you were going to accuse me of plagiarism?”

 

Jisoo bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, that,” she said. “I read your stuff, and if that’s any indication of what’s going inside your head, I think you’re actually a really, really deep person. But on the outside, why are you… so… well…”

 

Jisoo didn’t know how to ask without being offensive. Luckily, Dara caught her drift.

 

“You mean, why am I such a bitch?”

 

“Well. Yeah.”

 

Dara smiled. She actually _smiled_. Well, maybe it was more of a smirk, but this was Dara, so even that was a huge step forward. And then she actually made eye contact and Jisoo thought that hell must have frozen over. 

 

“I don’t mean to be,” Dara said, her smirk fading. “I’d say that that’s just the way I am but that’s a stupid excuse. I guess that’s just what happens when you’ve been alone as long as I have.”

 

Jisoo was about to ask her what she meant by that, but she held her tongue, supposing that Dara would explain anyway. Her old boss turned in her seat and took look through the window at the grocery mart. Her eyes looked over the store with a blank look in her eyes. She didn’t speak for a long time, only looked and looked at the store.

 

“My parents died here,” she whispered after a few minutes. Jisoo’s heart sank.

 

“What?” she said.

 

“Right there in this store,” Dara said, swallowing a hard lump in her throat. “My mom, my dad, my little brother.” 

 

Dara’s eyes glossed over. She looked at the grocery store but she wasn’t seeing it as it was. She was seeing giant flames engulfing entire aisles, smelling smoke, feeling it fill her lungs, feeling the heat of the sun devastating her skin.

 

“There was a fire one night,” she said, still staring blankly into the store. “They got me out, but they couldn’t get to them in the storeroom. I was eighteen.”

 

Jisoo realized suddenly who she was. “Wait. Dara you…” Jisoo said. “You’re the girl that Chief Park pulled from the fire?”

 

Chief Park, as in Jinyoung’s father. Dara looked back at Jisoo but then quickly let her eyes fall to the table.

 

“Yeah. I couldn’t stay here anymore after losing them, though,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Too many memories in this place.”

 

She finished her coffee and then tossed her paper cup into a nearby wastebasket.

 

“Anyway, I’ve been on my own ever since then,” Dara said. “I guess… I forgot how I’m supposed to be with other people. I guess I grew too selfish to be around other people. I don’t have a whole lot of friends, can’t keep a boyfriend longer than a couple months, so kids are out of the question, and then I got co-workers conspiring to get me fired.”

 

She laughed at her own misery, but Jisoo was slightly disturbed at how closely Dara’s life resembled her own.

 

“I used to think, though,” Dara said, becoming serious once more. “That the reason I’m alone is because it’s better that way.”

 

Dara had thought about this a lot. After losing her family, she’d forgotten how to make space in her life for other people. She had thrown herself into her writing after losing them, let her grief spill onto pages and into words. The only love she had left was for her work. She’d grown selfish. Too selfish to love anyone else.

 

But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want it. She just had to teach herself to let other people back into her life. It didn’t mean letting people replace her dead parents and brother, but she didn’t want to feel empty like this all the time. Which was she was reaching out in the first place.

 

“But anyway, I didn’t come here because I wanted to spill my emotions out,” Dara said, snapping back into old form. Jisoo was losing track of her moods. 

 

“Why are you here, then?” Jisoo asked. Dara huffed her breath and crossed her arms again.

 

“I’m done working for journals and magazines and following other people’s rules,” she said. “I’m ready to give _my_ vision a chance. I’m going to open my own independent publishing house. Actually, I sort of already have. I scouted locations inside and around the city and I’ve got my eye on a few places already. There’s one near the beach that I really like, I just need to get organized.”

 

Jisoo nodded, not really understanding why this was relevant to her question. “That… sounds good. I’m happy for you.”

 

“It’s just…,” Dara said, fidgeting again. “You know, going through this the past three months, I’ve come to a realization. I don’t know the first thing about running a business and as much as I like my solitary lifestyle, I can’t do it alone, and not many people like working with a bitch.” 

 

Jisoo blinked, wondering if this meant it was okay to call her a bitch to her face now that she was admitting it herself. 

 

“Oh,” Jisoo said. “Interesting.”

 

Dara pursed her lips. “I hear you have a business degree.”

 

Jisoo’s heart jumped at the question. “I do,” she said slowly, trying not to get too excited just yet. 

 

“And you did say that if there _anything_ you could do to make it up to me, I should let you know.” Jisoo searched Dara’s face for any sign of jest but found none. Her heart started pounding.

 

“Are you…” Jisoo said, slightly out of breath. “Do you want _me_ to be your partner?”

 

Dara said nothing in reply. Jisoo could tell that it was killing her pride having to ask a fresh-out-of-college girl to come help her start her business because no one else wanted to work with her. She may have been a horror as a boss back at Embrace, but the thought of being a partner at an independent publishing house was too thrilling for Jisoo to even remember all that.

 

“I don’t know what to say,” Jisoo said.

 

“I’ll remind you that you almost had me accused of plagiarism,” Dara said sternly. “So you owe me and you don’t have many other options.”

 

“No, I know that!” Jisoo said, waving her hands. “I just—I’m saying— _Yes_. Completely, yes, I’ll be your partner.”

 

“Let’s get one thing straight, though,” Dara said, narrowing her eyes at Jisoo and wagging a finger at her. “ _I’m_ the boss.”

 

The excitement got to Jisoo. She knew Dara was trying to have a serious conversation, but she was too thrilled with the new partnership to hold in her laughter. 

 

“Got it,” Jisoo said, trying to calm herself. Dara leaned back in her seat and started to break down the details of their new partnership. She talked about the new location she found for her independent publishing business. She talked about what kinds of business-related challenges she’d run into. She went over what Jisoo’s responsibilities would be, how much of the company’s revenue would be hers. She talked about strategies she had come up with for scouting new talent and recruiting more staff. She even offered to let Jisoo rent out one of the guest rooms in her apartment until she found a place of her own. 

 

Jisoo couldn’t believe this was happening. Dara, the horrid boss she almost framed for plagiarism who yelled in her face almost every other day, was going to be her partner at an independent publishing house that they would run together. 

 

Hell really had frozen over.

 

“Can I ask you for a favor?” Jisoo asked out of the blue. Dara stopped talking for a minute and cocked a brow at her.

 

“What?” she said.

 

Jisoo was feeling oddly brave today. Had Dara still been her Embrace boss, she would never have brought this up.

 

“I wrote a book,” Jisoo said. “Can you read it?”

 

Dara was prepared to say “no” since they would be very busy setting up shop and doing promotional work for their new business. But one look at this girl’s starry eyes and Dara felt like she was looking at herself. She remembered being a dreamer, being desperate for someone to give her a chance. She sighed.

 

“Fine,” she said, and Jisoo nearly yelped in excitement. 

 

“But hey, let me just say something up front,” Dara said, wagging her finger at Jisoo again.

 

“I’m not Julie,” she said. “I’ll read your book, but I won’t sit here and stroke your ego and hold your hand and give you a gold star on your homework every time you spell a word right. You have a lot of raw talent, but that’s not what’ll get you places. You need discipline, you need stamina, you need a thick skin and a reality check and you’re going to have to work hard at it and then work even harder. You’re going have to write and then rewrite and then scrap everything and be prepared to start again. No matter how good you are, there are going to be people who won’t like what you do. I won’t sugarcoat any of my critiques, and I won’t wipe your tears if I make you cry. Got it?”

 

Jisoo nodded firmly. “I wouldn’t want anything less.”


	30. Second Chances

Jinyoung ran his fingers through his hair in lieu of a comb, keeping an eye on the red numbers on the digital clock by his bed. 6:03 pm. If he didn’t leave in the next two minutes, he would be late for sure. 

 

Figuring that it was just dinner with a friend and there was no reason to put any real effort into his appearance, he didn’t bother changing out of the same blue flannel shirt that he’d worn to class that day. He grabbed a jacket, switched off the lights in his studio, and was out the door. 

 

Wonpil was a fellow med student at Cheonbyul that Jinyoung befriended during orientation. They weren’t as close as Jinyoung and Jackson, but Jinyoung figured it was time to make more and new friends. He saw so little of his college friends since graduation, and it would be nice to have someone to hang out with.

 

Wonpil had picked a restaurant by The Mile, which was, as the name suggested, a mile of trendy restaurants and shops that was a short walk from the beach and just a little bit longer of a walk from Jinyoung’s apartment. He decided to make the journey on foot and reached their meeting place in about twenty minutes’ time. He spotted Wonpil standing outside the restaurant.

 

With two girls.

 

Jinyoung stopped in his tracks. Wonpil was paying considerably more attention to one of the girls than the other, which could only mean one thing: a blind double date. Jinyoung considered turning around, walking back home, and then pretending he got sick all of a sudden, but Wonpil had already spotted him and was waving him over. Jinyoung sighed and approached.

 

“Took you long enough!” Wonpil said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I thought you said your place was close by?”

 

“Can I talk to you a minute?” Jinyoung whispered, pulling Wonpil aside and casting an apologetic smile to the girls. “What is this?”

 

“Okay, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ahead of time,” Wonpil said, his voice low. “But I didn’t know about this until last minute, either, and I figured ‘what’s the harm?’ You don’t have a girlfriend, right?”

 

Jinyoung’s jaw twitched. “No,” he said plainly. Wonpil didn’t know about Jisoo, but Jinyoung knew that if he attempted to explain _that_ situation, they’d never hear the end of it. Wonpil shrugged.

 

“Alright, well then let me introduce you,” he said. 

 

“I’m not dressed for a date,” Jinyoung said. Wonpil looked him up and down.

 

“You look fine.”

 

He grabbed Jinyoung’s sleeve and brought them back to where the girls were standing. They were both very pretty. It was getting colder so they were wearing pea coats over dresses and they wore their hair loose. 

 

“This is Wendy and Seulgi,” Wonpil said, gesturing to each of the girls. Wendy immediately detached herself from Seulgi and then slipped her arm around Wonpil’s, which left Jinyoung to assume that Seulgi was to be his date.

 

“I’m Jinyoung,” he said, introducing himself and shaking Seulgi’s hand. She smiled and shook his hand warmly. 

 

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “You go to Cheonbyul, too, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Jinyoung answered. “School of Medicine.”

 

“Awesome, Wendy and I go, too,” Seulgi said. “In fact, I think we have a class together. Wednesdays at 4?”

 

“Dr. Hwang?”

 

“That’s the one,” Seulgi said. “How’s your paper coming along?”

 

“Non-existent,” Jinyoung said, and Seulgi laughed along. Wendy and Wonpil joined in the conversation about non-existent papers that would be due shortly. They all laughed about it, but only to cover up how panicked that actually were. In another minute, a waiter came out to tell them that a table was ready. 

 

The situation was unexpected, but Jinyoung didn’t want to be rude, so he let himself be seated next to Seulgi and made conversation with her. All-in-all, the experience wasn’t _entirely_ painful. Seulgi was actually quite pleasant, and Wendy was pretty funny. They talked about classes and assignments, talked about social events going on around campus, about shows that were playing on TV, the latest celebrity gossip, the girls went silent when Wonpil turned to Jinyoung and spent fifteen minutes talking about baseball, then vice versa when the girls started discussing new trends in makeup. Wonpil and Jinyoung split the bill at the end of it. 

 

When dinner was over, though, it felt awkward to end the evening there. So Wendy and Wonpil suggested taking a walk down The Mile. It was a cool evening and it was windy this close to the sea, but there were still tons of people out tonight.

 

Wendy and Wonpil walked a little bit further ahead than Jinyoung and Seulgi, and they were arm in arm. Jinyoung and Seulgi walked beside each other, though they still maintained a bit of distance.

 

“So,” Seulgi said. “What kind of doctor do you want to be?”

 

Jinyoung shrugged. “Not sure, yet,” he said. “But I have a non-medical assistantship at the Children’s Hospital. So a children’s doctor, maybe. What about you?”

 

“Not sure yet, either,” she said as they passed a street performer doing magic tricks. “But my parents were both neurosurgeons.”

 

“Impressive,” Jinyoung said. “Not sure how you can top that, though.”

 

Seulgi laughed. “Challenge accepted.”

 

It was a crowded night at The Mile. Couples, groups of friends, and families were all out braving the November chill, walking between one shop to the next, filing in and out of restaurants, and forming circles around street performers beneath strings of lights. Jinyoung had never spent much time on this side of the city, but with the sound of ocean waves on just the other side of the street and the acoustic guitarists busking on the curbs, it reminded him of the riverside park back in the city center. The memory brought back with in a melancholic feeling. 

 

“Ooh, this place is new,” Wendy said, breaking Jinyoung out of his stupor. She was pointing at a bookshop across the walkway.

 

To Anyone: Independent Books and Publishers.

 

Wonpil and Wendy were already heading towards it, and Jinyoung and Seulgi had no choice but to follow. Jinyoung couldn’t help that small flush of guilt that overwhelmed him when he entered the shop. Books always reminded him of her. The inside of the shop was much more spacious than it looked from outside. The walls were painted evergreen and covered in provocative photography behind glass frames. There were rows and rows of books with signs above each shelf marking the genre. Already, the new bookshop was overrun with literary types. All glasses and flannel and leather shoes and an air of intelligentsia. A signpost on the wall pointed in the direction of the store office and the editors’ office, in case of publishing inquiries.

 

“This is interesting,” Wendy said, letting go of Wonpil’s arm to leaf through a large book about the art of Van Gogh. Wonpil headed straight to the science fiction section and browsed through the titles. Jinyoung surprised himself by unconsciously wandering over to the romances. Seulgi, not sure where to go, followed him.

 

“Didn’t know you were into the romances,” she said. Jinyoung looked over his shoulder at her.

 

“I had a friend who was obsessed with them,” he said. “Guess it rubbed off on me.”

 

He was browsing the titles, mentally noting the ones he’d seen on the shelf in her bedroom, which only reminded him of what happened the last time he was in her room. He cleared his throat and tried to come up with something to say to cover up the resulting blush.

 

“So, do you read books?” Jinyoung asked, moving on from the romances and over to a shelf marked “New Arrivals.” Seulgi shrugged.

 

“Not really, to be honest,” she said. “I don’t have a ton of time and… I’m not that interested in novels, actually. I have enough to read in Hwang’s class.”

 

Jinyoung was about to laugh and reply with another joke about Hwang’s class but a book on the New Arrivals shelf caught his eye. He grabbed the volume and brought it closer to his face to better read the title and the author’s name. 

 

“ _Dear Mama_ by Kim Jisoo,” Seulgi said, reading the title out loud. “Have you read it before?”

 

Jinyoung didn’t answer. He was too busy reading the author’s name again and again and again, his heart pounding faster each time he read it. Her book. It was _her_ book, he’s holding it in his hand. She did it. She _fucking did it_ , _she wrote and published a book_. He was floored. Speechless. Kim fucking Jisoo is a published fucking author now and he was so impressed he couldn’t even react.

 

“Excuse me, do you need help finding something?” said a boy. Jinyoung looked up and saw a young man wearing a name tag that said ‘Doyoung’ on it. An employee, he assumed.

 

“Uh, no, everything’s fine,” Jinyoung said. Doyoung looked at Jinyoung’s stunned expression and then at the book he was holding in his hands. The employee smiled.

 

“Are you a fan of Jisoo?” Doyoung asked.

 

Jinyoung raised a brow. _Well, that’s one way to put it_.

 

“Wanna meet the author?” Doyoung asked. “She’s here, she works here, I can ask her to come over.”

 

“What?” Jinyoung’s face went pale. Before he could even reply, Doyoung was already shouting for her. 

 

 _Shit_ , Jinyoung thought. Before he could even mentally prepare himself to face her again, he was confronted by a girl in a pale pink dress. Jinyoung felt his breath get caught in his throat, along with his voice. The last time he saw Jisoo was six months ago. She looked different: aside from the fact that she’d dyed her hair the color of a nebula, she had also put on a little weight, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. She glowed with health. She looked radiant and confident and born to take over the world.  If he thought his feelings for her had slowly faded in the six months they were apart, he was painfully mistaken since they came rushing back to him in full force at the sight of her. 

 

Jisoo, however, had to use all her strength not to turn and run. She looked at Jinyoung and then at the girl behind him and then at the book in his hands and she wanted to run away.

 

Doyoung and Seulgi both stood by, watching their reactions and feeling confused by their stunned silence. Doyoung thought for sure Jisoo would be pleased to meet a fan, and Seulgi thought that Jinyoung would feel honored to meet the author. But the longer they stood, they began to understand.

 

“I’ll just… go see if Dara needs any help,” Doyoung said.

 

“I’ll go see what Wendy is up to,” said Seulgi, and the two made themselves scarce. 

 

They were alone again. Jisoo turned to face Jinyoung. Both their mouths hung slightly open as if getting ready to say something but waiting to see what the other would say first. There was so much to say, so much to tell. Where could they even begin?

 

“How are you?” Jisoo asked, opting to be civil. 

 

JInyoung found his voice again. “Good,” he said, feeling the stiffness of their conversation. “You?”

 

“Doing fine,” Jisoo said, fidgeting with her hands. “Business is treating us well.”

 

“You work here?” Jinyoung said, looking around the place. Jisoo nodded.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “Nice, right? It’s cozy and I get to be around books all the time.”

 

He hated how awkward they were being. This wasn’t how they spoke to each other. But he didn’t how to go back to the way they were six months ago. Didn’t know how he could casually bring it back up without plunging them back into the past. So much time had gone by. He was a med student now and she had a book published. What if she had already moved on from him?

 

“I thought… you couldn’t work in publishing anymore,” Jinyoung said.

 

“I probably can’t,” Jisoo said, rubbing her wrists and not looking at him. “Or I couldn’t have if it weren’t for Dara. She’s the only person left in the industry crazy enough to hire me after everything.”

 

“Dara?” Jinyoung said.

 

“Yeah,” Jisoo said. “This is her place actually. She quit Embrace and opened her own publishing house, but I convinced her to use the extra space for a bookshop. I hired Doyoung, too. He’s a junior.”

 

“Oh,” Jinyoung said, not sure why she felt the need to include that fun fact. Jisoo bit down on her bottom lip. 

 

“H-how's med school?” Jisoo said. Jinyoung shrugged.

 

“Tough,” he said. “Tougher than I thought it’d be.”

 

Jisoo could see that much in his appearance. He was still as handsome as ever, but his features bore some signs of tiredness. _Workaholic, as always,_ she thought. 

 

They both had something to say to each other. Apologies and thoughts that had been kept inside for too long and threatened to burst. But to the both of them, the gravitas of the moment was overwhelming. The fear of failure loomed over their shoulders like the promise of death. The thickness of the air was suffocating them and they were choking on all the words they could not say. Doubt was holding their words hostage.

 

“So, how much is this?” Jinyoung said, opting to anything to save the moment. 

 

“It’s $14.99,” Jisoo said. Jinyoung started to reach for his wallet, so Jisoo led him over to the check-out counter and rang up his purchase. He wasn’t the first person to buy her book, but she was even more nervous than when sold her first copy. That book had some of her most intimate thoughts in it, and she was terrified of him reading them. She swiped his credit card with a shaky hand.

 

“I can sign it for you if you want,” Jisoo said. “Just something I do for customers.”

 

Jinyoung smiled for the first time since their encounter began. He pushed the book toward her and Jisoo grabbed a pen to sign it with. She flipped to the title flap inside the book and started to sign only to see that her pen had run out of ink. Jinyoung watched as she looked for a working pen. He was amused by the situation, Jisoo scrambling for a pen so she could sign a book that she’d written. He was suddenly seized yet again by an overwhelming sense of admiration.

 

“You’re a formidable woman, Kim Jisoo.”

 

Jisoo stopped searching for a pen and looked at him. Jinyoung was staring at her in awe.

 

“Excuse me?” she said.

 

Jinyoung shook his head. “I said you’re a formidable woman,” he said. “You knew exactly what you wanted back when we were kids, and now here you are.”

 

He was reminded of that time in middle school when he was trying to help her learn scientific notation, only for her to later become the star student in their entire class. He was so impressed with her then. It made him so motivated to do better so he could be worthy of her. Now here she was, a real author, living her dream.

 

The moment was interrupted however when Wonpil, Wendy, and Seulgi approached the check-out counter. Wendy was making a purchase, too, so Jisoo had to forget about signing the book for a minute and ring up Wendy’s items. Jinyoung stepped aside to let her through, and as he backed up, he found himself standing at Seulgi’s side again. He watched as Jisoo rang up Wendy’s items and made polite conversation with her. He looked around the bookshop and at all the people browsing through the shelves. He looked down at the cover of Jisoo’s book.

 

She was right. She _didn’t_ need him. This was _her_ dream, after all. What if she had no room in it for him?

 

 

 

 

At the end of the evening, Wonpil suggested that Jinyoung walk Seulgi to the station so that she could go home. There was no good reason not to, so Jinyoung obliged. The rest of the evening had unfolded pretty uneventfully. They continued walking, though Jinyoung talked considerably less than before his run-in with Jisoo. Seulgi talked less, too.

 

When they reached the station, Seulgi nodded a quick goodbye and was about to pass through the turnstiles when Jinyoung felt the need to apologize.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was distracted the whole evening, that was rude of me.”

 

Seulgi stepped away from the turnstiles a minute and faced him. “It’s okay,” she said. “I get it.” 

 

The sad smile on her face made it look like she really did understand.

 

“I just got out of a relationship, too,” Seulgi said, laughing. “I told Wendy I wasn’t ready to go on a date.”

 

Jinyoung raised his brows at that. “Wonpil didn’t even ask me.”

 

Seulgi shrugged. “You look like you give good advice,” she said. “What do you think? Do you think everyone deserves a second chance?”

 

Jinyoung had to think about that one. He didn’t used to believe in giving people second chances. He believed that people could usually be counted upon to do or say exactly what they mean to do or say the first time. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. That was what he thought. 

 

“Well, _I_ think everyone does,” Seulgi said when Jinyoung didn’t answer. And then she passed through the turnstiles and disappeared around the corner of the station, leaving Jinyoung alone on the other side. 

 

He walked the rest of the way home and made it back to his apartment just before midnight. Ordinarily, this was when he would be getting ready to go to bed, but he felt restless.

 

He made himself a midnight snack, flipped on the television and browsed through channels. Nothing could hold his focus for very long, however. So he turned it off, opened up the draft of his paper, and tried again to get something written, but he quickly realized that he wasn’t going to get any work done by just staring at it. 

 

All his brain could really do was keep reliving those few minutes in the bookshop, playing back the scene, again and again, slowing down some parts and speeding up others. He should have said something. He should have just taken the chance to apologize and ask her to take him back. But her guard was up, and he knew why. 

 

When he next checked the clock by his bed, it was 1:26 am. Feeling ridiculous, he suddenly remembered that he’d bought her book. He took it out of the plastic bag, sat down on his worn-out couch and opened it to page one. 

 

He spent the rest of the night reading, which wasn’t part of his plan. He was planning to just read the first chapter or until he fell asleep, but that didn’t happen. He couldn’t stop reading. This wasn’t the kind of story he had expected to read from her at all. He was expecting a cheesy dramatic romance in the style of Sophie Kinsella or Lauren Conrad, but what he got instead was a stirring and slightly haunting story of a girl trying to uncover the mystery behind her birth mother’s death. 

 

Parts of it made him laugh out loud. Other parts made him cry. Some parts, he had to close the book for five minutes to collect himself before continuing. So palpable was the suspense. 

 

And then there was the romantic subplot, the heroine reuniting with a young man from her forgotten past whose words and actions felt uncannily similar to things that he would say or do. It was dawn by the time he finished the book, and he felt thoroughly spent. At the end, all he could do was close the book and sit there, staring into space for a good one minutes just thinking about the exhausting, thrilling journey the book had just taken him on. 

 

Maybe the best thing about reading it was feeling like Jisoo was _there_ telling him this story. As hard as she must have tried to keep authorial conceit out of her book, he felt her in every word. Opening the book felt like walking into her room; he felt consumed by her presence and it made him realize just how desperately he missed her. And just how desperately he wanted a second chance.

 

 


	31. Happy To

Dara was the one who insisted that she do the reading and the Q&A tonight.

 

In the two months that Jisoo had spent working with Dara and rooming with her in her apartment, she had learned how to deal with her. She had learned when to ignore her bitchy outburst, when not to take her off-the-cuff remarks personally, and also when she needed to be checked. Because their professional relationship was on a more even ground, Jisoo didn’t feel like she was being squashed under the older girl’s thumb anymore.

 

For the most part, Jisoo let Dara run her business the way she wanted to, but Jisoo had learned early on that if she wanted Dara to listen to her, she had be a bit more forceful. Sometimes, she even got her way.

 

The book reading and Q&A wasn’t one of those things, however.

 

It was eight in the morning and Jisoo had just gotten to the shop to open up. Doyoung arrived not long after, and she instructed him to make sure their rental order for chairs for tonight was still confirmed. He went into the office to make the call and Jisoo busied herself by moving the cash back into the register and then dusting around in preparation for tonight. 

 

It was surreal to think about. Just a few months ago, she thought for sure that her fate was sealed. She’d never be taken seriously as a writer ever again. Now, here she was preparing to read an excerpt of her debut novel to a small crowd of fans and answer their questions. This was stuff only _real_ writers were expected to do, and now she was doing it.

 

 _I really have arrived,_ she thought. 

 

She heard the door open and a customer stepped in. Jisoo leaned over the counter to see who could possibly be coming in this early in the morning?

 

“Hello?” she called out. Then from around the corner appeared none other than Jennie Kim. 

 

“Excuse me,” Jennie said, waving a copy of her book in the air. “Can I talk to the author of this book?”

 

Jisoo laughed and Jennie walked over to the counter. Then she looked around the room and looked impressed by the shop. 

 

“Oh my god, it’s so _cute_ ,” Jennie said. “There’s even real books and everything!”

 

“It’s the real deal,” Jisoo said, patting the cash register. “You are looking at one of the partners to To Anyone Independent Publishers. Dara’s the creative director and editor-in-chief, I handle the business end and also her first client. I’ll be happy to sign your book for you if you want.”

 

“Oh my god, you’re going to be famous,” Jennie said, pushing the book at Jisoo for her to sign. “You own a bookshop _and_ you’re a real author? Kim Jisoo, I want to be you when I grow up.”

 

“Just keep reaching for the stars,” Jisoo said, finally finding a pen that worked and scribbling her signature on the title flap of the book. 

 

“So, the word around town is that you’re doing an event tonight for your new book,” Jennie said. “You excited?”

 

Jisoo groaned. “I mean, yes and no,” she said. “It’s cool and all, but I’m nervous. This place is gonna be full of fans and critics and stuffy, literary types. What if I get confronted by someone who hated my book?”

 

“They can catch these fists if they insult your book,” Jennie said, making a fist and punching the air. Jisoo laughed. 

 

“Hey,” Jennie said, punching Jisoo’s shoulder lightly. “You should be proud of yourself, kid. Look at you, you’re living the dream! You should be over the moon!”

 

“I am,” Jisoo said, though not in the most convincing of tones. Jennie scoffed.

 

“Oh yeah, I can totally feel the excitement,” she said. It was a joke, but the way Jisoo’s smile faded afterward made Jennie afraid that she might have accidentally hit a sore spot. Though she wasn’t sure what she said to trigger it. 

 

“You _are_ happy, aren’t you?” Jennie asked. “You got everything you—“

 

“I know I did,” Jisoo snapped, and then she was immediately sorry. Of course, Jennie didn’t mean to hit a sore spot. Jisoo guessed she must have been even more nervous than she thought. She felt restless, like her skin was the only thing keeping her from going everywhere all at once. Jennie sensed it right away.

 

“Is something wrong?” Jennie said. 

 

Jisoo sighed, supposing there was no point in hiding it from her best friend.

 

“No, nothing, she said. She grabbed a cart of books and pushed it into an aisle to shelve. Jennie followed. “It’s just that,” Jisoo began. “Guess who’s back.”

 

“Who?” Jennie asked.

 

Jisoo sighed as she silently slid a book into place. Jisoo was suddenly sorry that she had brought the subject up. When he left the shop that night, Jisoo was prepared to move on from him, just as she had in every other aspect of her life. She was doing so well. The shop was thriving. She and Dara were getting along. Her life was finally starting to look the way she wanted. And he walked right back in and reminded her that she had ruined the one good thing she had going for her. And now he was probably dating someone else and it was too late to get that back. 

 

When Jisoo didn’t answer, Jennie stared hard at her face. They hadn’t known each other very long. They had only met in freshman year of college, but already, Jennie was an expert at hearing what Jisoo wasn’t saying.

 

“Jinyoung?” Jennie said softly. “Still?”

 

Jisoo was taken slightly aback by the last bit. “What do you mean? Not _still_ ,” she said, slamming a book onto the shelf. “He came into the shop a few days ago, I had a momentary relapse. That’s all.”

 

“Jisoo,” Jennie said, crossing her arms and leaning against a shelf. 

 

“I’m fine, Jennie,” Jisoo said. “I really am.”

 

She pushed the cart into another aisle and began restocking books.

 

“You said so yourself, I should be over the moon,” Jisoo said. “Why shouldn’t I be? I got everything I wanted. I’m a partner at an independent publishing house, I’m renting a room in the city, I’m a part-time editor collaborating with new authors, I have a book, and I’m doing Q&A’s as a published author, I might even have another book out soon. I’m living the dream.”

 

“Girl, you aren’t fooling anyone,” Jennie said, crossing her arms. “You still like him, don’t you?”

 

The only reply Jisoo gave was a thick silence as she continued stocking books. Jennie looked at her friend with a sad expression. She didn’t understand; if she loved this boy, why didn’t she just go get him the way she went after her other dreams?

 

“What’s stopping you?” Jennie asked.

 

Jisoo stopped stocking books for a minute. She looked over at Jennie and crossed her arms.

 

“I messed up really bad back then, Jennie,” Jisoo said. “And it wasn’t the first time I did. I don’t want to disappoint him anymore. Also…”

 

Jisoo rubbed her arm soothingly.

 

“I can’t stop thinking about that last thing he said to me,” Jisoo said. “That maybe I _should_ be alone. He could be right. Maybe, _right now,_ at this point in my life, I _should_ be alone. Maybe I’m too selfish to be with him or anyone.”

 

“Hey,” Jennie said taking a step toward her. “You gave up Embrace to help Dara, and you didn’t even like her back then. That wasn’t a selfish move.”

 

“Still,” Jisoo said. “If I had called him and asked him to take me back after that, what would that say about my intentions?”

 

People are supposed to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do. Not because they’re anticipating some kind of reward or as an investment in good karma. Jisoo wanted to believe that she helped Dara because it was the right thing to do, not just because she wanted Jinyoung back.

 

Jennie understood, of course, but it still made her sad. Her friend was finally getting what she had always dreamed about, and it was hard seeing her not realize that maybe she wanted something else all along. 

 

“Okay,” Jennie said, her tone unsure. “It’s just… well…I just think that… when you were doing that dumb fake boyfriend thing with Jinyoung… you had this look on your face that I’d never seen on you before. Nor since.”

 

Jisoo raised a brow at her. “What do you mean? How did I look?”

 

“Happy,” Jennie said. “I don’t think it’s selfish to want to be happy. That was your _real_ dream, wasn’t it?”

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung was late for a study group.

 

His shift at work had ended later than usual and he didn’t want to show up in the same outfit he’d worn and sweat through all day, so he made a detour back to his apartment to shower and change. He was scrambling around the studio grabbing everything he might need and rubbing a towel over his head. 

 

Pens. Paper. Books. He checked the time and then shoved everything into a bag. He had just thrown open the door and was getting ready to rush out when he found his path blocked by a familiar face.

 

“Jackson?” Jinyoung said, surprised to see his friend there. “What’s up?”

 

Jinyoung closed and locked his door. When he turned back to Jackson, he saw Jennie Kim by Jackson’s side. He looked between his Jackson and his girlfriend and felt nervous all of a sudden.

 

“What’s going on?” Jinyoung asked. Jackson took a breath to speak, but then he ended up turning to his girlfriend.

 

“Jennie’s got something to say to you,” he said. Jinyoung gave her his attention.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jennie said. Jinyoung was stunned.

 

“To a study group?” he said, though he had a feeling that Jackson’s girlfriend was going to drag him somewhere else.

 

“No, I don’t think so,” Jennie said. _Confirmed_ , thought Jinyoung. _This study group is cancelled._

 

“Mind telling me what’s going on here?”

 

“You still like Jisoo, right?” Jennie said. Jinyoung stammered as he attempted to reply.

 

“I… uh… I…”

 

“Jackson!” Jennie said, calling on her boyfriend for back-up. Jackson cleared his throat.

 

“Bro, do you still like her or not?” Jackson asked. “Don’t try to lie, you know you’re shit at it.”

 

Jinyoung felt cornered.

 

“Yes, I do,” he answered truthfully, but then Jennie gave him an annoyed look.

 

“So, then go after her!” Jennie said.

 

“I want to,” Jinyoung said. “But I don’t know what _she_ wants. As far as I can see, she already has everything she’s ever wanted and she did all of that without my help. What if there’s no place for me in her life? It’s been six months, what if she’s moved on? What if she’s already perfectly happy and me barging back in would only ruin everything she’s accomplished?”

 

“It’s still you,” Jennie said. “I saw her today, I talked to her. Trust me, for Jisoo, it’s still you.”

 

Jinyoung stared at her, his throat feeling dry all of a sudden. Jennie sighed.

 

“She wanted to be with you more than she wanted to be a writer, Jinyoung,” Jennie said. “ _You_ are her dream! She looks happy but she isn’t really. And I’m so sick of you two dancing around your feelings! Stop misunderstanding each other all the damn time and just be up front!”

 

Jinyoung looked at Jackson and then back at Jennie glowering at him. He swallowed.

 

“What should I do?” he asked.

 

“Tell her,” Jennie said firmly. “Tonight.”

 

 

 

 

 

Jennie and Jackson were walking ahead of him as they made their way over to the bookshop. When they reached the shop, he saw that chairs had been brought out and arranged in rows in front of a slightly raised platform, upon which rested two armchairs set up catty-corner to each other. Jinyoung confirmed his suspicion that the chairs were set up for an event when he saw a poster resting on an easel.

 

_Book Reading and Q &A with Kim Jisoo, Author of Dear Mama._

 

Jinyoung’s stomach dropped when he suddenly realized that there could only be one reason Jennie was insisting that he tell Jisoo tonight. 

 

She wanted him to do it right here. In front of everyone. In the most extra, corny, paperback romance, chick-lit novel way ever. _A public confession_. 

 

 _Fuck_. 

 

He took one look around the room and at all the people filing in and taking their seats and went pale. No. He couldn’t. 

 

“Hey, over here!” Jennie said, waving the boys over to three empty chairs in the second to last row. Jinyoung was still too stunned at having been trapped into Jennie’s scheme. He had been planning on getting Jisoo away from the cash register for five minutes to talk alone somewhere quiet, not _this_. 

 

“What are we doing here?” Jinyoung whispered as he slid into a seat next to Jackson. Jennie gave him a stern look.

 

“You said you’d tell her tonight, so here we are,” Jennie said.

 

“Not like _this_!” Jinyoung said. “There are too many people here, how do you expect me to talk to her?”

 

“It _is_ a Q &A, you know,” Jennie said. “After the book reading, just stand up and talk to her!”

 

Jinyoung hurriedly shook his head and started looking for the nearest exit.

 

“I can’t do it,” Jinyoung said, sweating. “There’s too many people, I’ll just talk to her after the—“

 

“Well, then bringing you here was a colossal waste of time!” Jennie snapped.

 

“Come on, bro,” Jackson said, joining his girlfriend in badgering him. “Think of how great a story this would be to tell your grandkids years from now!”

 

“What is so wrong about just pulling her aside to talk after the event?” Jinyoung said.

 

“Hey, you wanted to be a hero, right?” Jinyoung was stunned that Jackson even remembered. Yes, that was he’d written in his middle school essay ten years ago, a dream inspired by his father’s heroism, but how did that matter—

 

“Well, here’s your chance to be the hero of a romance novel, bro,” Jackson put a hand on Jinyoung’s shoulder and shoved him back down into his seat just as the lights dimmed dramatically and the event began. 

 

Jinyoung slumped down in his seat. He didn’t know what Jackson or Jennie expected him to say or do, but he didn’t want Jisoo to see him until he had a plan of action. What would he say? What should he open with? How could he just casually bring it up?

 

The audience clapped when the bookshop clerk, Doyoung walked on stage with a mic followed by Jisoo. She was wearing another white blouse tucked into a plaid skirt, and the whole outfit gave her a stylish schoolgirl vibe. Her purple hair was loose and wavy and she had a flower clip tucked into her ear. It struck him suddenly as a grown-up version of the way she looked on the first day of school, ten years ago. 

 

“Good evening, everyone!” Doyoung said, bowing to the audience. “Thank you all for coming tonight! It looks like we have a great turnout. I’ll be your host for tonight, but the real star of tonight’s show is standing right beside me. Everyone, please welcome To Anyone’s debut breakout author, Miss Kim Jisoo!”

 

Jisoo was still feeling nervous as she stepped closer to the front of the stage and graciously received the audience’s applause. She fixed her gaze on the back of the room, afraid that looking at the people would only make her feel even more nervous. Dara was standing back there, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and her mouth pursed. The thought of facing her partner’s wrath if this event went awry was really what kept Jisoo going.

 

A stage hand brought up a podium with a mic stand and placed it in the center of the platform. Jisoo tapped the mic to make sure it was on.

 

“Can you all hear me?” she said uncertainly into the mic. Various members of the audience grunted in reply.

 

“So,” Jisoo said, nervously tucking a hair behind her ear. “Like Doyoung said, thanks for coming tonight. Um, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m super nervous.”

 

Some people in the audience laughed, which comforted Jisoo even though she wasn’t trying to be funny.

 

“I’m assuming that if you’re here that you’ve read my book,” Jisoo said. She held up a copy. “It’s called _Dear Mama_. It’s kind of a jumbled mess of a bunch of different genres.”

 

She absentmindedly flipped through the book, trying to ignore the spotlight pointed at her. 

 

“But I guess, I would call it a family drama with a little bit of romance,” Jisoo said, laughing nervously. “Uh, it’s a fiction novel that I wrote recently while going through a tough spot earlier this year. If you’re a post-grad like me, you know what I’m talking about. As I said, it’s fictional, but I drew on a lot of personal experiences as I wrote it. In a way, it’s pretty semi-autobiographical.”

 

She looked over the crowd again, trying to read their response. She cleared her throat and tucked another stray hair out of her face.

 

“Anyway,” she said, fixing her stance. “I’m going to be reading from the first chapter, so I’ll just get right into it.”

 

She cleared her throat again as she opened the book to the first page. Then, she began to read.

 

Jinyoung was still slumped in his seat. She hadn’t seen him yet. Jackson and Jennie, however, were watching him intensely. He didn’t even have to turn and look to feel the heat of their stares burning a hole into his face. His feet wanted to pick him up and run out the door. His stomach was doing flips, his heart was racing like a motor, and his mind was reeling with countless fears and hopes and thoughts and doubts and images.

 

All he could do was stare at Jisoo like she was the one fixed star in the swirling dizziness of the universe. His childhood crush, his academic rival, his role model, his inspiration.

 

Jisoo wrapped up her reading and then took a deep breath as the audience applauded. She smiled nervously as she backed up and took a seat in the armchair provided. Doyoung the MC was seated in the other armchair. The lights came back up all of a sudden, making Jinyoung wince and his heart jump. 

 

 _Oh god_ , he thought. It was time for the Q&A. 

 

“Awesome reading,” Doyoung said and Jisoo waved his compliment away modestly. “So, now’s the time for the audience to ask you questions about your work. Why don’t we start with this lady here in the front?”

 

The woman sitting in the front row stood and asked Jisoo a question about the structure of her novel. Jinyoung was too busy being a bundle of nerves to pay attention to what was being said. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Jackson even handed him a flask of whisky that he’d hidden in his pocket and Jinyoung took a swig to calm his nerves.

 

“You are way too nervous,” Jackson whispered. “Don’t overthink. Just tell her the truth.”

 

The truth. Right, Jinyoung thought. The truth would set him free. If Jisoo could find the strength and courage to tell the truth, so could he. All these doubts clouding his mind had to be banished in the next ten minutes, or he might never go through with the plan.

 

Two more people asked questions. Jisoo tried her best to answer as thoroughly as possible. She hoped no one could tell how nervous she was. If she stood, she was afraid her knees might knock against each other.

 

She took a question from a woman in the front again. A man in glasses had two questions, one about stylistic influences and another about the publishing process that Jisoo had to redirect to Dara. The more questions she answered, the more her voice shook. She was seriously regretting not practicing the reading earlier so she could have made notes on when to pause to take a breath and strengthen her voice.

 

Jinyoung’s anxiety was piling up.

 

 _Stand up_ , said a voice inside him. _Say something now._

 

But his legs were rooted in place and his body wouldn’t budge. 

 

Doyoung was scanning the crowd. “Looks like we’ve just about exhausted our questions,” he said. 

 

Jisoo breathed a sigh of relief. _Made it_ , she thought. One book reading and question session done. When she looked over at Dara, her partner looked pleased. Or at least as pleased as Dara was able to appear. Jisoo smiled and lifted her mic to her mouth to give a polite thank you to the crowd.

 

“Well, alright, then, if there are no more questions—”

 

“Yeah, actually my friend has a question!” 

 

Jinyoung’s face went white when Jackson shouted that. Everyone in the crowd turned and looked at them and Jinyoung had never felt more exposed in his life. Even Doyoung shielded his eyes as he squinted in their direction. When Jinyoung looked at Jisoo, she was staring straight at him. 

 

The whole world went quiet. 

 

“Get up!” Jackson whispered, grabbing his arm and pulled him up to his feet. Jinyoung rose slowly. All eyes were on him. His throat was dry. 

 

Jisoo felt rocked to her core seeing him. She was snatched with quiet panic. _What is he doing here?_

 

“Oh,” Doyoung said, salvaging the silence. “Alright, I guess we have time for one more. You have a question for our author, sir?”

 

Jinyoung opened and closed his mouth several times before he could summon _something_ to say.

 

“Um, yes,” he began. 

 

Jisoo held on to the edge of the armchair. Jinyoung wouldn’t let go of her gaze. He shoved away all his nerves and went for it.

 

“So, you categorized your novel as a romance and a family drama,” he started to say. “But the romantic subplot sort of takes a backseat to all the others. I just thought it was interesting given your previous background writing for a major romance publication like Embrace that you decided to forego writing something in your area of specialization.”

 

Jackson and Jennie turned to each other and exchanged confused looks. This didn’t sound anything like a declaration of love. Jisoo looked equally shaken. She raised the mic to her mouth.

 

“Is there a question somewhere in there?” she said.

 

“I’m getting there,” Jinyoung said, grasping for words. He recalled to mind the plot of her book. His heart was pounding.

 

“In your novel, the heroine begins a romantic relationship with a young man and their courtship makes up the bulk of the first half of the book,” he said. “But then you leave the fate of that relationship unresolved at the end. Is there a reason you decided for the heroine and her love interest not to be together?”

 

Jackson and Jennie turned to each other again, this time sharing an enlightened look. Jisoo felt a weight settling on her chest. _Is he seriously doing this? Right now? In front of all these people?_

 

“Well,” Jisoo said, answering. “As much as you or other readers may want them to be together, it’s really a matter of character arc.”

 

She swallowed and then continued. “They both have lessons to learn and journeys to complete, and at that point in the book, neither of their individual arcs had come full circle yet, especially not hers. And they can’t be together until then.”

 

Jinyoung held his ground. 

 

“Can’t they learn those lessons and make those journeys together?” he asked. 

 

Jisoo gave him a hard stare before lifting the mic again.

 

“Don’t you think it’s better for her to be alone?” she said. Jinyoung felt his heart clench. So she _did_ still think about that. The air in the room was tense. Everyone was still staring at him.

 

“What if I was wrong?” he said gently.

 

“Sorry, we couldn’t hear you,” Doyoung said. Jinyoung sighed.

 

“I said, what if I was wrong?” he said, louder. Everyone turned to Jisoo, expecting an answer. But she gave none. They shared a regretful look and didn’t speak. She had no words. She, a writer, had no words. 

 

Doyoung laughed nervously. “Okay, well that was definitely more than one question. Let’s move on—”

 

“Why didn’t come find me after you left Embrace?” All his nerves were gone. They were replaced with daring. 

 

“Excuse me, sir, we actually have to move—”

 

“Let him talk!” Jackson shouted. Jinyoung only tore his gaze away from Jisoo to give his friend a thankful nod. Then he looked back at the author and repeated his question.

 

“Why didn’t you come find me after you left Embrace?”

 

Jisoo felt something inside her burst.

 

“I was too ashamed,” she whispered, voice trembling. “I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.” 

 

“I thought about you day and night these past six months,” Jinyoung said softly. “So many times I wanted to call you or show up at your door. I wish I could have been there when you left Embrace. I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt you to give it up.” 

 

His racing heart had calmed to a steady pounding. 

 

“I wish I could have told you how proud I was of you.”

 

Jisoo clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from bursting into tears. Jinyoung didn’t even realized that he’d left his seat and that he was standing in the center aisle. None of his movements or any of the other people registered in his mind. It was like he and Jisoo were the only ones there.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing a hard lump in his throat. 

 

“I didn’t mean to push you away or hurt your feelings,” he said. “But I did anyway, and I know how stupid my apology must sound to you now. I’m a stubborn, reckless, stupid guy and I have a lot of growing up to do, too.”

 

All the thickness in the air had cleared. He could breath again. He felt light. There were no more nerves, no more anxiety, no more fear. Nothing to hold him back. The only thing left to say was the truth. 

 

“But I love you, Jisoo.”

 

A murmur spread through the audience. Once his heart was open, courage rushed in. Jisoo’s chest rose and fell with every inhale and exhale, and she couldn’t believe this was really happening to her. JInyoung’s face broke into a smile. 

 

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you, ten years ago on the first day of school,” he said. “And I never stopped, not during our ten years apart, not even during these past six months, I _still_ love you.”

 

He took a step forward, bringing him right to the edge of the platform. Jisoo didn’t even notice him reaching into his pocket. When he brought his hand back out, he stretched it out to her. 

 

Her lucky flower.

 

“And if you’ll let me,” he said. “I really want to be your boyfriend again.”

 

Jisoo was at the edge of tears, but before they could spill over, her face broke into a smile and then a laugh. _Boyfriend,_ she thought. What a beautiful word. She raised the mic to her mouth.

 

“Is there a question in there somewhere?” she said. Jinyoung laughed and took a deep breath.

 

“Can we try again?” 

 

Jisoo took her lucky flower back from him. Instead of a response, she jumped down from the platform and threw her arms around him, mouthing the word “yes” into his chest. Jinyoung pulled her closer and couldn’t help but laugh from sheer, unapologetic, incandescent joy. Jisoo was laughing, too, he could feel it vibrating against him. He didn’t even remember that there was a crowd of at least fifty people watching them until he heard Jackson and Jennie hooting in the back.

 

“ _Now kiss her_!” Jackson screamed, making the audience laugh, though they eventually joined him in chanting.

 

“ _Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!_ ”

 

Jisoo pulled away from Jinyoung’s arms to look at the crowd, amused. Then she looked up at Jinyoung. Her _boyfriend_ , Jinyoung. Official, at last. 

 

He lifted his hand to cup her face. Her spirit blossomed at his touch. Then he bent down and kissed her lips. 

 

All the noise fell away. All the chanting was muted. Neither of them heard the crowd erupting into ooh’s and aww’s. Jisoo missed the chance to see Dara wiping tears in the back of the room. For one tiny, _tiny_ flashing starburst of a moment, they were both in their own world, the one that they used to live in alone, that they would now on have to share.

 

But they didn’t mind. They were happy to.


	32. Epilogue

TEN YEARS LATER

 

Jisoo rolled her wrists around, trying to get the tightness out of them. 

 

She stared at the giant pages of digital text on her computer screen and read what she had just typed. Then he grimaced and deleted the sentence, rewriting it in reverse grammatical order. Still not write. She hit backspace and tried replacing one of the words with another. 

 

She was spending too much time on this one sentence. She highlighted the words, changed the font color, and then opted to keep going with plans to come back to that section later. 

 

The rest of the chapter came out of her brain without much hesitation. Her heart started pounding the way it always did when she achieved her flow state. She didn’t even notice when Jinyoung walked in and set a plate down beside her keyboard. He leaned against her desk and crossed his arms. Jisoo typed in a final period before looking up at her husband. Jinyoung had a stern look on his face.

 

“If you don’t eat this sandwich, I want a divorce,” he said. 

 

Jisoo sat back in her chair and cocked a brow at him.

 

“You say that every time I sit down to write,” she joked. 

 

“I mean it this time,” Jinyoung said, moving her keyboard out of the way and pushing the plate closer to her. “Step away from the word processor, come eat.”

 

“I can’t, I’m in the zone,” Jisoo said. “If I stop now, I’ll lose momentum and I won’t get it back and my next check-in is in a week.”

 

“You still have to eat this sandwich,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo looked down at the plate and saw that there was half of a sub sandwich on it. She looked between the food and the words she had typed up on the page. She had a rhythm going. If she stopped to eat, it would interrupt her flow state. 

 

“You don’t know anything about how writing works, do you?” Jisoo said, squinting at him. Jinyoung narrowed his right back at her.

 

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I do know how pregnancy works, and I’m not gonna let you starve our baby.”

 

Jisoo’s smug grin disappeared. Right. She was four months pregnant. She always seemed to forget about that when she sat down to write. Her hand instinctively went to her belly, which wasn’t completely swollen yet, but a baby bump was definitely there. Jinyoung tilted his head and Jisoo sighed, admitting defeat. She reached for the sandwich and took a bite from it. There was extra relish tucked between the two slices of bread. She’d developed a strange taste for pickles when she got pregnant with their first child, so Jinyoung figured it would be a safe choice.

 

Jisoo chewed begrudgingly.

 

“You did this to me,” she grumbled through a mouthful of bread and lettuce.

 

“ _You_ started it,” Jinyoung smirked. 

 

Jisoo blushed, taking another bite out of the sandwich and remembering that she _had_ been the one to initiate that time. Jinyoung was about to say something else, but his words were cut off by the sound of rapid little footsteps running at them.

 

“Mama!” shouted a very excited toddler that was running full speed at Jisoo. Jinyoung crouched down and caught his son before he could crash into his mother. 

 

“Yah, Jisung,” he said sternly, turning the boy to face him and giving his arm a firm shake. Their son had developed a bad habit of sprinting at his mother and jumping at her, sometimes hitting her stomach with his head. Now that she was pregnant again, they were trying to put a stop to it.

 

“What did I tell you?” he said. “You can’t run at Mama’s tummy like that. You might hurt your baby brother.”

 

“Or sister,” Jisoo snapped. Jinyoung gave her a challenging smirk and then turned back to his son.

 

“Jisung,” he said. “Do you want a baby brother or a baby sister?”

 

Jisoo leaned forward, trying to catch her son’s eye. “Think about this for a minute, Jisu—”

 

“I want a brother,” said the little boy, stuffing his hand into his mouth. Jinyoung smiled triumphantly and then turned back to Jisoo with a smug grin. She narrowed her eyes at him.

 

“I hope you know he only loves you because you give him sweets,” Jisoo said. “You bought his love.”

 

Jinyoung was unfazed. “It was for sale. I wanted it.”

 

Jisung wriggled out of his father’s grip and walked over to Jisoo’s lap. She wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth. 

 

“Can we eat the cake now?” he asked, grabbing a fistful of her skirt. 

 

“Is everyone ready?” Jisoo asked, looking at the door as if she could see the rest of the guests through it and around the corner of the hall. Jisung started hopping excitedly.

 

“Yeah, I’m ready!” he said, smiling.

 

“Alright, let’s go light the candles, then,” Jisoo said. “But we all have to sing, first. Do you know the song?”

 

“Yeah, I know it!” Jisung said, sprinting into the hall. Jisoo turned to the computer one last time to save her draft and then she shut the monitor off. Then, she stood to follow Jisung into the hallway.

 

“Sandwich,” Jinyoung said. Jisoo skidded to a stop. She turned to retrieve her sandwich.

 

Out in the living area of the apartment, everyone else was participating in birthday festivities. 

 

“Jisung! Come open our present first!” Jackson said, waving a wrapped box in the air and taunting Jisoo and Jinyoung’s first born. Beside him, Jennie was trying to get their daughter, Jamie, to eat something other than the brown sugar pancakes that Jisoo had set out for the children. 

 

Jinyoung’s older sister had two sons and a daughter slightly older than Jisung. She and her husband were sitting on the sofa with Jinyoung’s mother, who had brought along her boyfriend. Jinyoung’s other sister was out on the terrace having a smoke break with Wonpil.

 

“Ooh, is it time for cake? Yummy!” cooed Rose, who was talking to Doyoung. Everyone and their mother except Rose seemed to know that Doyoung had a crush on her. They were hoping that sometime this year, they would finally put all their hearts to rest by asking her out. Doyoung caught Jisoo’s eye as she walked toward the refrigerator to grab the birthday cake. He gave her a shy smile.

 

Lisa’s mother had come to visit, and the two of them were talking to Wonpil’s fiancée, who was not Wendy, but rather a girl named Mijoo, a stand-up comedienne whom he met thru Dara since Mijoo had been booked to put on a show a couple nights at the bookshop. Dara, meanwhile, was standing somewhere between the terrace and the couch, talking to Jisoo’s father. 

 

“Cake! Cake!” Jisung chanted, jumping onto a chair and excitedly hitting his hands against the surface of the table, calling the other children to the kitchen. Jisoo cupped her hands around her mouth and called the rest of the guests over to the table, too.

 

“Jisung, watch your hands!” Jisoo said. “Don’t touch the candles, that’s fire, it’s hot!”

 

“I want two pieces!” said one of Jinyoung’s nephews.

 

“Don’t touch the cake yet, we still have to sing!” said his niece. 

 

Jisoo was just positioning the cake in the center of the table, trying to make sure none of the kids burned their hands on the candles.

 

“I want cake, too!” shouted Jennie’s daughter, Jamie.

 

“Ooh, it’s strawberry!”

 

“Rose, don’t you start, too,” Jisoo snapped. 

 

Jisoo finally got all four candles lit and the family gathered around the table. She sighed. It really shouldn’t have taken this much struggle to get these people around a table to sing “happy birthday.” When they finally got around to it, Jisoo felt like she’d accomplished a huge task. 

 

“Alright, everyone ready?” she said. “Okay, go!”

 

Jisung sat back in the chair and beamed as everyone sang “happy birthday” in unison. Jisoo stood back and watched. Jisoo loved when he smiled. She remembered holding him for the first time in the hospital. He was so little and fragile and her heart broke into a million tiny pieces at the sight of him. Through the post-birth haze, she looked at her son and felt sick with joy. 

 

It was _him_ , the little boy with the big ears, crinkly eyes, and his father’s gummy smile. The little boy she saw in her mind’s eye all those years ago. He was finally here. He was finally hers.

 

And he was four years old today. 

 

 

 

 

 

Jinyoung’s elder sister and mother were the first ones to bid their goodbyes when the party began to wind down. His mother’s new boyfriend had work the following day, and she didn’t want to impose on them by asking to spend the night, even though Jisoo told her again and again that it was no problem at all. Even with her father on the couch, they could have set up another makeshift bed in the nursery for her. Her mother-in-law was adamant, however.

 

Dara was the next to leave, saying that she had promised one of her writers feedback in the morning and had yet to read the manuscript. Wonpil and his fiancee decided to head on home at the same time. Lisa’s mother agreed to meet her daughter back at her apartment later that night.

 

Jackson turned the TV on and put on a nature program. His daughter, Jamie, was particularly fond of a show about a herd of gazelles. With half the guests gone, everyone tried their best to fit onto the sofa. 

 

Jisoo and Jinyoung’s friends took this quiet time as an opportunity to talk more seriously about some things. New jobs, old jobs, new apartments, vacations they’d been on, promotions and raises, new business deals, significant others, and the like.

 

Jisoo, meanwhile, had excused herself to the kitchen to get a head start on the dishes. She was in the middle of scrubbing a bit of cake off a plate when she felt another presence creeping up on her. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was Jinyoung who’d just walked into the kitchen.

 

He leaned against the counter next to the sink and took a deep breath.

 

“I think we have an artist,” he said. He cocked a brow at Jisoo, and she turned around to see what he was talking about. She looked over her shoulder. Their friends were still talking in the living room, teasing Doyoung about his crush on Rose again. But over their heads, she saw Jisung sitting at the table on the terrace, scribbling something on a piece of paper. There was a box of crayons spilled onto the surface, and her father was leaning over his grandson.

 

She smiled warmly at the sight. Jisung was gripping a blue crayon tightly in his pudgy hands and was running ti vigorously across the page. Jisoo laughed gently.

 

“He’ll have an even harder time than me,” she said. Jinyoung turned to face the sink and nudged her lightly with her elbow.

 

“You found your way, though,” he said. 

 

His wife’s first book did well among the independent circle, but after about two years, Dara recommended that she find an agent to recommend it to a bigger publishing house. Which is exactly what Jisoo did. _Dear Mama_ was a hit, especially with younger women. It became a modest bestseller. A studio exec even approached her about selling him the film rights, once. Soon, Jisoo’s editor was begging her to write another book. 

 

“What do you have now?” Jinyoung said, taking stock of her achievements in his head. “That’s, like, two novels, an anthology, and four episodes of a podcast?”

 

“Don’t forget I co-wrote an episode of that police drama,” Jisoo said, drying a plate and setting it aside. Jinyoung smirked.

 

“Of course, how could I forget _that_?” he said. His wife had just started venturing into the brave new world of writing for television. She was paid very generously for her work on that police script, and the couple put the money to good use. 

 

“It paid for our vacation to Paris,” he said, bringing his voice down low. “Where my daughter was conceived.”

 

Jisoo was thrown by his reference to a particularly romantic vacation they took to France, and then again by the mention of a daughter

 

“Your _daughter_?” she said, raising a brow. Jinyoung shrugged and gestured to her pregnant belly.

 

“It could be a girl, couldn’t it?” he said.

 

Jisoo tilted her head thoughtfully. “I thought you said Jisung wanted a little brother,” she said.

 

Jinyoung laughed. “He’ll get over it.”

 

Jisoo smirked and began to count them off on her fingers. 

 

“So, there’s me, the writer. You, the pediatrician,” she said. Jinyoung was just finishing up his residency at the children’s research hospital. 

 

“And we’ve got Jisung, the artist,” Jisoo said. She touched her belly again. “What do you think your daughter will be?”

 

“My hope is she’ll be able to be anything she wants,” Jinyoung said, looking fondly at his wife’s baby bump. “Though, if she takes after you, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

 

Anyone with eyes could see that Jisung took after his father in the looks department. At least twice, his mother had accidentally called her grandson by her son’s name. He cried in the hospital from sheer happiness the first time he held the boy. That was the moment he realized that all those years he spent dreaming of being a hero he had really been dreaming of being a father. 

 

Being Jisung’s father was the best feeling in the world. He loved having a son. And he wouldn’t mind having a second one.

 

But a daughter… the thought made his mind race with all the possibilities. He pictured a little girl with narrow, heart-shaped lips and defiant eyes, wide with wonder, thrumming with quiet strength and glowing with confidence. He pictured taking her and her older brother camping up on Mt. Sol, pictured being the first man in her life, pictured scaring off all her future boyfriends. 

 

The thought excited him.

 

“Let’s be supportive, okay?” Jisoo said. Jinyoung turned and saw her still staring at Jisung.

 

“If he really does grow up and he wants to be an artist,” Jisoo said. “I think he’ll have a hard enough time without us trying to lead him astray.”

 

Jinyoung blinked.

 

“Sure,” he said. “But, come on, Jisoo, he’s only four. He has plenty of time to explore things he likes. Just let him play with some crayons for now, worry about his future later.” 

 

Jisoo did worry, though. Having children constantly made her think about all the things she wished she could have had as a child. She loved her father, but it was true that he often made her feel like she couldn’t do some things. She wanted Jisung to know that whatever it was he wanted to be, she would always love and support him.

 

“Don’t worry about it right now,” Jinyoung said, taking her out of her worries. He put his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. “Just live in the moment.”

 

Jisoo looked at him and knew that he was right. Jisung was still a child. Let him be one for now. Jisoo smirked and took her hand from his to put the dried plates back into the cupboard.

 

“I can’t believe you just told me to ‘live in the moment,’” Jisoo joked. “Don’t you know that writers hate cliches?”

 

Jinyoung scoffed.

 

“Cliches?” he said. “Our entire relationship started out as a fake-dating trope.”

 

Jisoo flinched. _Oh yeah_ , she thought. _Those days_. Jinyoung, seeing her reaction, laughed.

 

“So, what was that you were saying about cliches?” he said, smirking. Jisoo rolled her eyes. She turned and grabbed two more used plates and quietly set them in the sink. 

 

She and Jinyoung had gone through quite a lot to be together today. First the fake-dating thing, which then turned into a real thing, then the six months apart, then they got back together and dated for a year before taking another six-month break during which they briefly dated other people and then getting back together a third time to finally getting engaged and married.

 

That came out to about four years of marriage, five years of dating, and nearly twenty years overall of knowing each other. But twenty years later, she _still_ hated to lose a verbal spar with him.

 

“I have dishes to wash,” she said indignantly. She reached for the knob above the faucet, but she froze when she felt his hand slide across her baby bump and snake around her waist. He pulled her body close to his and pressed his forehead against her temple, syncing his breathing with hers. Jisoo smiled.

 

“Okay, that’s enough,” she said, after standing there for more than a few seconds. “I actually do have to do dishes.”

 

He didn’t move. Jisoo’s hands were still wet, and she didn’t want to get water on his clothes, so she used her hip to lightly shove him away. This ended up being the wrong thing to do since the way they were standing made her hip connect with and rub against his groin. Jinyoung staggered back a little. When he looked back at Jisoo, his expression had changed.

 

Jisoo felt a shiver run through her. Oh god, she thought. He’s got that _look_ again. She cursed herself mentally. She was always accidentally arousing him. Hell, that was how Paris got started. She hid her blush by turning her attention back to the sink. 

 

Jinyoung walked back toward her. He reached over to the sink and shut the water off. Jisoo stood in quiet anticipation as he moved her hair aside, dipped his head down, and kissed her neck. At first, she stayed still and let him kiss her, but then remembered that they were still entertaining guests.

 

“Jinyoung,” she whispered, trying to keep her still-wet hands off him. “Our friends are still here.”

 

He stopped kissing her for a minute and made an exaggerated gesture of looking around the kitchen.

 

“Hmm, weird, I don’t see them,” he said. 

 

This time, when he turned back, he took her by the lips. Jisoo was stunned by how much passion he was putting into this, though she supposed it was also a long time coming; they’d both been so busy party-planning and working that several days had gone by since the last time they _really_ kissed. His tongue was teasing hers and his hands were roaming a little low. Her baby bump was a minor inconvenience, really, which is to say that that wasn’t going to stop them. 

 

Jisoo laughed gently. “Let me dry my hands, at least,” she whispered against his lips. “They’re still wet.”

 

“Not as wet as _you’re_ going to be,” he growled, pulling her closer to him. 

 

“Stop talking like that,” she whispered. “We’re at a four-year-old birthday party, there are children here. There’s one right between us in my womb.”

 

Jinyoung smirked.

 

“Do you remember how _that_ happened?”

 

“Shh, quiet!” Jisoo blushed. Jinyoung was about to kiss her again, but they were interrupted by a small voice and a small child ramming his head into the side of Jinyoung’s leg. 

 

“Jisung!” Jinyoung said, surprised by his son’s sudden appearance. He was glad the boy had run into his leg instead of his mother’s belly. He really did need to stamp that habit out of him. Jisung raised a piece of paper up to his father, he had taken a step back from Jisoo now that their son was in the room.

 

“Appa, Mama, look!” Jisung said. Jinyoung took the paper from him and looked down at a crayon-drawn picture of three figures and a blob in the corner. A family picture. Jinyoung smiled.

 

“Is this us?” he said, crouching down and collecting the boy into his arms as he stood again.

 

“Yeah,” Jisung said, drooling a little. Jisoo looked at the family portrait her son had drawn and was actually impressed by the artwork. It took a lot of coordination for a four-year-old to draw something like this. Perhaps they did have an artist in the making. 

 

“Is the little one you?” Jinyoung asked, pointing to the smallest of the three blue figures. One of them was more circular than the others, and he figured that was supposed to be Jisoo, pregnant.

 

“Wow, you even drew Mama’s belly,” Jinyoung said, amused by the accuracy.

 

“What is this?” Jisoo said, pointing to the blob. 

 

“A dog,” Jisung answered. Jisoo widened her eyes.

 

“A _dog_?” she said. “Jisung-ah, we don’t have a dog.”

 

“Appa said he was gonna buy one for me for my birthday.”

 

“Did he?” Jisoo cast a glance at Jinyoung. Her husband cleared his throat and laughed nervously. 

 

“Anyway,” he said. “Um… so, Jisung, did you like your party?” The little boy yawned as he nodded his head. He must be tired, Jisoo thought. She had let him stay up because her father wanted to spend a little time with him, but ordinarily, he’d be in bed at this time. She and Jinyoung would ordinarily be in bed, too, though not always sleeping. 

 

Jinyoung grinned and pressed a kiss to the boy’s face. “Happy birthday, son,” he whispered. 

 

Jisoo smiled at the gesture. Sometimes, she liked to just stay back and watch Jinyoung interact with their son. It during these quiet moments that she caught herself doubting the reality of it all. Was this _really_ her life now? 

 

This was one of those moments. Jinyoung with their son in his arms, standing beside her. In the other room, all their loved ones were gathered. She rubbed her belly, wishing that her next son or daughter could know that he or she was being born into a wonderful family. She felt something take hold of her right then. It started in her chest and then spread throughout her whole body. She looked up Jinyoung and Jisung, and she felt completely, overwhelmingly, radiantly, sublimely happy. 

 

She smiled. _I guess I got my romance novel moment after all_.


End file.
